By Nick Cais­tor, BBC

Hip-hop singer Wyclef Jean is one of the fron­trun­ners among the many who have reg­is­tered for the Hait­ian pres­i­den­tial elec­tions due to be held on 28 November.

Mr Jean, who became inter­na­tion­ally famous with the group The Fugees, was born 37 years ago in the Hait­ian town of Croix-des-Bouquet, although he left for the US as a child.

Reg­is­ter­ing his can­di­dacy on Thurs­day in the Hait­ian cap­i­tal, Port-au-Prince, Mr Jean stressed he was not the can­di­date of Haiti’s dias­pora, and felt com­pletely Haitian.

“I have my elec­toral card and voted in the last elec­tions five years ago,” he told reporters.

He will not be the only singer in the race.

Michel Martelly, known as Sweet Micky, is famous in Haiti and is to stand for the Repons Pey­izan (Peas­ants’ Response) grouping.

Like Mr Jean, he insists that the main chal­lenges fac­ing Haiti, apart from recon­struc­tion after this year’s dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake in which about 230,000 peo­ple died, are to edu­cate its youth and to improve the health system.

Mean­while, the gov­ern­ing Inite (Unity) party sprung a last-minute sur­prise; before reg­is­tra­tion ended on Sat­ur­day, they chose Jude Celestin, head of the government’s main con­struc­tion com­pany, instead of endors­ing for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Jacques Edouard Alexis.

The chair­man of the Inite party Joseph Lam­bert gave no rea­son for the refusal to back Mr Alexis — who imme­di­ately announced he would stand for a dif­fer­ent party, the Mobi­liza­tion for Hait­ian Progress.

Among the other can­di­dates for the pres­i­dency is another for­mer prime min­is­ter, Yvon Nep­tune. As the last head of gov­ern­ment under Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, who was ousted in 2004, he hopes to win the back­ing of the many sup­port­ers of Aristide’s Lavalas movement.

Other can­di­dates include the may­ors of sev­eral Port-au-Prince neigh­bour­hoods, and Leslie Voltaire, the present government’s recon­struc­tion plan­ning minister.

Observers in Haiti have crit­i­cised the call­ing of these pres­i­den­tial and leg­isla­tive elec­tions in Novem­ber with more than a mil­lion Haitians still liv­ing in camps and tem­po­rary shelters.

Lit­tle of the rub­ble has been cleared from the cap­i­tal Port-au-Prince and other stricken cities, and nor­mal life is only slowly return­ing to the streets.

The head­quar­ters of the Pro­vi­sional Elec­toral Coun­cil was destroyed in the 12 Jan­u­ary earth­quake, and one-fifth of the offi­cials charged with super­vis­ing elec­tions were either killed or missing.

But the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity has insisted that the elec­tions go ahead as sched­uled. Donors have been reluc­tant to dis­burse the $5.3bn (3.2bn) pledged to help relief and recon­struc­tion efforts in Haiti until Pres­i­dent Rene Preval has left office.

Mr Preval, who is barred by the con­sti­tu­tion from stand­ing again in these elec­tions, has seen his pop­u­lar­ity slide because of a per­ceived lack of lead­er­ship in the wake of January’s earthquake.

The US has directly crit­i­cised his performance.

Richard Lugar, the senior Repub­li­can sen­a­tor on the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee, has writ­ten: “Pres­i­dent Preval’s actions do not sug­gest a depar­ture from the self-destructive polit­i­cal behav­iour that has kept Haiti the poor­est coun­try in the West­ern Hemisphere.”

At first, Mr Preval appeared reluc­tant to leave power before next year, but at a press con­fer­ence in July he told reporters: “It is vital for me when I leave there is an elected pres­i­dent, an elected parliament.”

In addi­tion to the pres­i­den­tial con­test, leg­isla­tive elec­tions will be held to replace all of the 99-member Cham­ber of Deputies and one third of Haiti’s sen­ate seats.

Prepa­ra­tion for the polls is being car­ried out with the help of the regional Orga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can States.

OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza has expressed con­fi­dence that, despite the mas­sive dis­rup­tion due to the earth­quake, more than four mil­lion new elec­toral cards can be handed out.

Mr Insulza told a donor meet­ing in early June that the OAS would be work­ing with the UN and Hait­ian offi­cials to make sure the vote is con­ducted smoothly.

Some 150 observers from the OAS and the Caribbean com­mu­nity group Cari­com are expected to observe the election.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-10891924