By Miami Her­ald Staff and Wire Reports

It was unknown which of the 30-plus can­di­dates will be allowed to run for Haiti’s pres­i­dency. A deci­sion may come on Friday

PORT-AU-PRINCE – Haiti’s elec­toral com­mis­sion said late Tues­day that it was post­pon­ing its rul­ing on who will be allowed to run for pres­i­dent in Novem­ber elec­tions, leav­ing the can­di­dacy of hip hop artist Wyclef Jean and more than 30 oth­ers in limbo.

A state­ment from the com­mis­sion, known as the CEP, said it would post­pone the announce­ment until Friday.

CEP spokesman Richard­son Dumel said the eli­gi­bil­ity require­ments of a num­ber of can­di­dates were still under review. The deci­sion to delay the release of the list is based on a “con­sid­er­able num­ber of appeals” by can­di­dates and cit­i­zens, elec­tion offi­cials said.

The delay was the lat­est bizarre turn in the fledg­ling pres­i­den­tial race in this earthquake-torn country.

Jean — one of dozens of can­di­dates vying for the office — said he was in hid­ing Tues­day after receiv­ing death threats. The musi­cian dis­closed the threats in a series of e-mails to The Asso­ci­ated Press, reveal­ing few details. Jean said he was told to get out of Haiti and that he was in hid­ing in a secret loca­tion in the Caribbean country.

Mem­bers of Jean’s inner cir­cle told The Miami Her­ald he was at his mother’s house in Cabaret. He could not be reached for comment.

The Haitian-born Jean said he did not know whetherthe CEP would approve his can­di­dacy but that there had been ques­tions about whether he met the res­i­dency requirement.

“We await the CEP deci­sion but the laws of the Hait­ian Con­sti­tu­tion must be respected,” he said in one of a flurry of e-mails.

Later in the evening, he sent the AP a one-word e-mail: “Hope!”

The con­sti­tu­tion requires can­di­dates to have lived in the coun­try for the five con­sec­u­tive years before the elec­tion. Jean knew his U.S. upbring­ing could be a road­block to his can­di­dacy, but has said his appoint­ment as a rov­ing ambas­sador by Pres­i­dent René Pré­val in 2007 exempts him from the res­i­dency requirement.

Lawyers for the musi­cian were at the CEP head­quar­ters seek­ing to argue his case.

More than 30 peo­ple filed to run for pres­i­dent of a coun­try still strug­gling to recover from the Jan. 12 earth­quake, which destroyed thou­sands of build­ings and killed an esti­mated 300,000 people.

Haiti’s pres­i­dent will pre­side over the spend­ing of bil­lions in for­eign recon­struc­tion aid in a coun­try with a long his­tory of polit­i­cal tur­moil. Pré­val is not per­mit­ted to run for reelection.

Tues­day evening, dozens of local reporters gath­ered at the CEP head­quar­ters to await the elec­toral body’s find­ings. Armed U.N. peace­keep­ers from India and Hait­ian police stood guard out­side the office, a for­mer Gold’s Gym seized by the gov­ern­ment after the building’s owner was arrested on drug-trafficking charges. For­mer Prime Min­is­ter Jacques-Edouard Alexis waited upstairs at the CEP offices, where his can­di­dacy had been protested.

CEP records obtained by The Miami Her­ald show that peo­ple listed as cit­i­zens con­tested the eli­gi­bil­ity of some of the can­di­dates, includ­ing Jean, Jude Celestin, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Alexis, for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Yvon Nep­tune, U.N. liai­son Leslie Voltaire and musi­cian Michel “Sweet Micky” Martelly.

Two peo­ple con­tested Jean’s can­di­dacy on the grounds that he does not meet the res­i­dency require­ment. A jus­tice of the peace, the records men­tion, went to the sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hood of Las­sarre — where Jean stays when he vis­its Haiti — to inter­view a Vodou priest in an effort to estab­lish Jean’s res­i­dency requirement.

The records say Jean sub­mit­ted the required paper­work to prove his eli­gi­bil­ity, which included a copy of his iden­tity card and proof of residence.

Martelly, a konpa musi­cian known for cross dress­ing and other over-the-top on-stage antics, had his can­di­dacy chal­lenged because some­body deemed him to be a “cult of immoral­ity.” The evi­dence: an album called 400 per­cent Kaka Live 2001. The elec­toral board dis­missed the chal­lenge, say­ing Martelly has a clean record.

Mean­while, sev­eral dozen Jean sup­port­ers marched and jogged in the streets of Pétionville, a block away from the bar­ri­caded CEP headquarters.

Not every­body sup­ported Jean. “He doesn’t have the capac­ity to be pres­i­dent,” said Jean Patrick Bernaud, 37, an employee in a rubble-removal cash-for-work pro­gram. “He would make a bet­ter radio direc­tor. He under­stands music.”

As the nation waited for word on who could run for pres­i­dent, mem­bers of the Interim Haiti Recov­ery Com­mis­sion approved 29 projects, from debris removal to job cre­ation in agri­cul­ture, total­ing $1.6 billion.

“It’s really sad to see after six months there is still not really enough money,” said J. Billy Louis, a South Florida res­i­dent who serves on the com­mis­sion. “The pop­u­la­tion is expect­ing more than what we have received so far.”

Ear­lier this year, the inter­na­tional donor com­mu­nity pledged $5.3 bil­lion toward Haiti’s recon­struc­tion. But the money has been slow in com­ing, evi­denced by the fact that of the 29 projects pre­sented, only 11, cost­ing about $700 mil­lion, are fully funded.

Among the projects that will receive money is a partly funded $94.2 mil­lion back-to-school pro­gram. The Inter-American Devel­op­ment Bank has com­mit­ted $26 mil­lion towards help­ing to pro­vide school vouch­ers, uni­forms, debris removal and tem­po­rary shel­ters for students.

Miami Her­ald staff writ­ers Jacque­line Charles and Tren­ton Daniel in Port-au-Prince con­tributed to this report.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/08/18/1780697/decision-on-who-can-run-is-delayed.html?story_link=email_msg#ixzz0wyEuspXr