By Jonathan M. Katz, Asso­ci­ated Press

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.

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?

“I started com­ing to Haiti after the Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide was taken out­side of Haiti (in 2004),” Jean told The Asso­ci­ated Press in an inter­view after fil­ing his can­di­dacy Thurs­day. “What I did was I went into the slums and started with kids inside of the rough­est communities.”

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. As the eight-member pro­vi­sional elec­toral coun­cil spends the next 12 days ver­i­fy­ing can­di­dates’ cre­den­tials the singer’s cam­paign will argue his 2007 appoint­ment as an ambassador-at-large exempts him from the requirement.

Some on the streets of this sea­side, sugar-growing town west of Port-au-Prince are not convinced.

“The con­sti­tu­tion says you have to spend five years in the coun­try. Did he? I don’t think he did,” said Billy Fran­cois, 38, who sells sun­dries from under a road­side tarp in Leogane, which was almost entirely destroyed by the dev­as­tat­ing Jan. 12 earth­quake that left a government-estimated 300,000 peo­ple dead.

The father of three said he was not opposed to Jean, but that nei­ther he nor other poten­tial can­di­dates appear ready to tackle Haiti’s ram­pant unem­ploy­ment and crime. “I’ve been vot­ing since 1990 and nobody has done any­thing for me,” he said.

Jean’s out­sider status—he speaks Eng­lish far bet­ter than Cre­ole and left the coun­try Fri­day to take his wife and 5-year-old daugh­ter home to New Jersey—lends itself to debate.

Some say an out­sider would intro­duce a new style of pol­i­tics; oth­ers that it would guar­an­tee of a weak, out-of-touch head of state. Jean fueled dreams by mak­ing it out of Haiti and strik­ing it very, very rich—he makes up to $18 mil­lion a year, some of which he brought back through his char­ity, Yele Haiti.

“I will vote for Wyclef because he will develop this coun­try. I’ve seen what he’s done before. When­ever the coun­try is affected by some­thing, he is always present,” said Eric Keatant, a 24-year-old engi­neer­ing stu­dent relax­ing in a Kobe Bryant jersey.

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.

Jean resigned as the group’s chair­man on Thurs­day, hours before for­mally start­ing his can­di­dacy. 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 to the U.S. Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice. He told AP that the money would be repaid and his finances made pub­lic within days.

In a coun­try where cor­rup­tion is always a con­cern, those mat­ters are not likely to go away soon.

If the singer gets on the bal­lot he will face a crowded and sharp-elbowed field.

Another front-runner is expected to be ex-Prime Min­is­ter Jacques Edouard Alexis, who served under Pres­i­dent Rene Preval until being sacked by the Sen­ate dur­ing riots fueled by high food prices. He has the back­ing of Preval’s newly formed Unity party.

Many of Jean’s own advis­ers within the Viv Ansanm party also sup­port the can­di­date of an allied party: archi­tect and recon­struc­tion mas­ter plan­ner Leslie Voltaire.

For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Yvone Nep­tune is expected to run, as is for­mer First Lady Mir­lande Manigat.

Already reg­is­tered is a musi­cian of almost equal pop­u­lar­ity to Jean in Haiti, Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly, who secured the endorse­ment of Jean’s for­mer Fugees band­mate Pras Michel.

For two decades after the 1986 fall of the dic­ta­tor Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duva­lier, Hait­ian pol­i­tics were essen­tially defined by the split between pro-elite and busi­ness can­di­dates and the pop­ulism of Aris­tide, an ex-priest who won elec­tions in 1990 and 2000 only to be ousted twice first by a coup and then a rebellion.

Jean does not fit neatly in either category.

After Aristide’s 2004 over­throw the singer posi­tioned him­self as a peace­maker between gangs who sup­ported Aris­tide and heav­ily armed rebels. Two years later he sup­ported Preval, seen at the time as the pro-Aristide can­di­date. Preval later broke with Aristide’s supporters.

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.

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.

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.

“I con­sider him a friend of mine,” Clin­ton, who as pres­i­dent restored Aris­tide to power, told The Asso­ci­ated Press on Fri­day. “I also have a high regard for the for­mer prime min­is­ter (Alexis) … I just want them to have a good elec­tion and I want it to rein­force, not under­mine the recon­struc­tion of the country.”

Aris­tide, who lives in South African exile, has not endorsed a can­di­date. His Fanmi Lavalas party is expected to be banned from the race.

For peo­ple on the streets of Leogane, such polit­i­cal debates pale in com­par­i­son to their imme­di­ate needs for food, secu­rity and post-quake shelter.

Excel­lence Sil­vianise, a 36-year-old mother of two, said the gov­ern­ment must lead the way if Haiti will escape poverty. “Our par­ents didn’t leave us any­thing at all. We have noth­ing to work with.”

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