"Singer Wyclef Jean expected to seek Haiti’s presidency; Star born near Port-au-Prince, raised in NYC" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press | August 4, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Singer Wyclef Jean will announce his candidacy for president of earthquake-ravaged Haiti, the former head of the country’s Chamber of Deputies said yesterday.
Former deputy Pierre Eric Jean-Jacques said that the hip hop artist will run as part of his coalition in the Nov. 28 election....
Jean is popular in Haiti for his music and for his work through his charity Yele Haiti, which raised millions of dollars after the Jan. 12 earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people and knocked down most of the government ministries and many homes in the capital.
Rumors have swirled for months that Jean, 37, would run for president. The singer has always been careful not to rule out a run for the office and recorded a song “If I was President.’’
He was born outside Port-au-Prince but left as a child and grew up in Brooklyn.
What about the people back on the island, MSM?
Dozens of candidates are expected to compete for the presidency in the Nov. 28 election, among them Jean’s uncle Raymond Joseph, Haiti’s ambassador in Washington.
He must be AmeriKa's guy.
Other probable candidates include former prime ministers, mayors, and another popular Haitian musician, Michel “Sweet Micky’’ Martelly.
Questions surround Jean’s qualifications for office.
Oh, no, not a Haitian birther controversy!
He must prove he has resided in Haiti for five consecutive years, own property in the country, and have no other citizenship but Haitian. Officials have disqualified some candidates on technicalities while allowing others to run.
In 2007, the singer was named an official Haitian ambassador-at-large by President Rene Preval, whom Jean supported in his 2006 reelection bid. Preval has served two non-consecutive terms and is barred by the constitution from seeking office again.
Not that he would stand a chance of winning with the country still literally in shambles.
In recent weeks Jean’s Twitter feed has been awash with original and re-tweeted demands for transparent elections, proposals for reducing Haiti’s chronic poverty, and calls to defend camps of the estimated 1.6 million people made homeless by the quake from forced eviction.
Reaction to his possible candidacy has been divided as Haitians debate the pluses and minuses of his inexperience....
Haiti’s next president will face an enormous task of rebuilding the country.
Well, WTF has been going on the last seven months, and where did all the millions in aid go?
But the office has never been an easy job: Presidents have only rarely completed a constitutional five-year term — most in history have been overthrown, assassinated, declared themselves “president-for-life’’ or some combination of the three.
Yeah, no mention of the CIA roles in the many coups or the outright AmeriKan occupations over the centuries.
It's all those uppity Haitians that dared to free themselves, boot Napoleon, and create their own state.
Empires never forget.
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But the politics sure makes sweet music, 'eh?
"Haiti faces a question: Who is Wyclef Jean?" by Jonathan M. Katz, Associated Press Writer | August 6, 2010
LEOGANE, Haiti --Street star. Scandal-plagued aid director. Ex-Fugees hip hop frontman. The moment he filed his candidacy, Wyclef Jean became the most famous -- and thus potentially most powerful -- candidate in Haiti's critical post-earthquake presidential election.
But for all his renown as a musician, charity provider and above all Haitian-born success story, a stark fact remains the morning after: Few in this impoverished and often rudderless country know who he really is, what he stands for, or what is driving him to seek the presidency.
He has compared his candidacy to that of U.S. President Barack Obama and says he wants to build Haiti's economy principally by attracting foreign investment -- yet his campaign borrows songs, style and support from the populist liberation theologian and exiled Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Oh, then the U.S will rig the vote (another side benefit of help turned into occupation).
And before these questions even come into play his celebrity-driven campaign -- he has promised to bring 50 Cent to Haiti -- must deal with the biggest question surrounding the 40-year-old singer: Has Jean, whose parents took him to Brooklyn as a young child, lived long enough in Haiti to claim its most important job?
Was he an illegal?
*******
Haitian presidents must have lived at least five consecutive years in the country leading up to election day, slated this year for Nov. 28. By nearly all measures Jean has not....
Then why so much print?
Jean makes up to $18 million a year, some of which he brought back through his charity, Yele Haiti....
But after years of skating by with little scrutiny, the post-quake attention turned up a string of alleged improprieties at Jean's Yele charity including allegations that it paid Jean himself to perform at fundraising events, bought advertising air time from a television station he co-owns and gave lavish salaries to staff.
Oh, then HE SHOULD FIT RIGHT IN to Haitian politics, and the Aristide mouthing is just boom-boom-boom bulls***!
Jean resigned as the group's chairman on Thursday, hours before formally starting his candidacy.
Yeah, that will make it all better.
He has denied intentional wrongdoing and said the aid group hired a new accounting firm to oversee $9 million in post-quake fundraising, of which $1.5 million has been spent.
There are questions about his personal finances as well. The Smoking Gun website reported Jean owes $2.1 million in back taxes....
Un-flipping-real!
In his interview with AP, Jean praised former U.S. President Bill Clinton's vision for Haiti's economy and said he would also work to attract foreign investment in agriculture, mining and the garment export industry -- positions which Clinton readily admits will make Haiti's elites richer while growing a middle class.
So the hip-hopper is nothing but a gangsta rapper for the globalist crowd?
But Jean's rally earlier in the day resembled nothing so much as a pro-Aristide demonstration, with supporters given gas money to come up from the slums. The crowd even broke into a standard Aristide protest song with Jean's name substituted for the exiled leader.
Even a drowning man grabs at an anchor.
I mean, look at America: We elected Obama.
Clinton, who co-chairs the international commission overseeing a pledged $5.3 billion in reconstruction aid to Haiti, praised Jean but said he wanted to stay out of Haitian politics as the campaign season heats up....
Oh, it is BILLIONS!
Aristide, who lives in South African exile, has not endorsed a candidate. His Fanmi Lavalas party is expected to be banned from the race.
Yup, that's the kind of democrapy and freedom AmeriKa brings ya!
For people on the streets of Leogane, such political debates pale in comparison to their immediate needs for food, security and post-quake shelter....
Yeah, SOMEHOW that is ONLY an AFTERTHOUGHT after the POLITICS!
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How interesting that webbers were left with this:
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — Singer Wyclef Jean officially announced his bid to be president of Haiti to a roaring crowd of supporters yesterday, thrusting himself into a contentious race to lead an impoverished country reeling from a devastating earthquake.
At one point the hip hop artist-turned-politician bodysurfed on the hands of bandana-waving backers in Haiti’s capital and stepped onto a speaker truck to address the crowd of hundreds. Jean had submitted his candidacy papers 10 minutes before the provisional electoral office closed.
“America has Barack Obama and Haiti has Wyclef Jean,’’ shouted Jean, who was born in Haiti but raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. Many in the crowd wore T-shirts distributed by supporters.
You can have them both if you want.
The former Fugees frontman enters a highly competitive and crowded race for a difficult and dangerous job. Only one person has completed a democratically elected five-year term in Haiti’s history — current President Rene Preval — who is poised to do it again.
The winner of the Nov. 28 general elections inherits a destroyed capital, 1.6 million homeless people, and countless groups fighting over billions of dollars in international reconstruction funds pledged after a January earthquake that killed an estimated 300,000 people.
Jean originally planned to join the coalition of Pierre Eric Jean-Jacques, former Chamber of Deputies leader. But he switched at the last minute to Jean-Jacques’s brother’s party to make room for government planner Leslie Voltaire in Jean-Jaques’s coalition.
If Jean’s candidacy is approved, he will face several candidates who lack his international fame but have more political clout. Among the most formidable is the ousted former prime minister, Jacques-Edouard Alexis, who secured the backing of Preval’s powerful Unity party this week. Preval is barred from running by the constitution.
An eight-member board reviews would-be candidates and verifies whether they meet all the constitutional requirements, including having lived in Haiti for five consecutive years leading up to the election and never having held foreign citizenship.Nothing about the charity and its corruption, webbers?
If I didn't know the AmeriKan MSM better I would call that censorship.
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