By Ryan Tracy, Newsweek

Hip-hop singer’s cam­paign to lead Haiti dogged by ques­tions, hurdles.

When Wyclef Jean announced that he would run for pres­i­dent of Haiti, his can­di­dacy had a whiff of inevitabil­ity, if not tri­umphal­ism. Many, per­haps even the hip-hop star him­self, seemed to assume he would seize fron­trun­ner sta­tus and then be elected by acclamation.

Two weeks later, Jean may still be the fron­trun­ner. But his fledg­ling can­di­dacy is uncer­tain, its fate in the hands of a nine-member pro­vi­sional elec­toral coun­cil weigh­ing whether the U.S.-reared musi­cian is eli­gi­ble for the race. Jean awaits the ruling—now expected Friday—in an undis­closed loca­tion, chased into hid­ing, he told the Asso­ci­ated Press, by death threats.

The hide­away shields Jean from a harsh spot­light trained on the finan­cial deal­ings of his char­ity, Yéle Haiti, and on upheaval in his cam­paign after the PR firm in charge of it quit. And it pro­vides a respite from crit­ics who lam­poon his attempt to nav­i­gate Haiti’s dif­fi­cult polit­i­cal ter­rain, chal­leng­ing his sin­cer­ity, his expe­ri­ence, and even his accented Creole.

“The chal­lenge of build­ing a viable state is real and urgent. Clef is unfor­tu­nately clue­less on this,” says Joce­lyn McCalla, a senior adviser to Haiti’s spe­cial envoy to the United Nations and for­mer direc­tor of the National Coali­tion for Hait­ian Rights. (The spe­cial envoy, Leslie Voltaire, is also run­ning for pres­i­dent. McCalla says he is not advis­ing the cam­paign.) “He’s been able to gen­er­ate quite a bit of pub­lic­ity around his pres­i­den­tial bid. Some would say this is a circus.”

Assaults on Jean’s cred­i­bil­ity began in the wake of Haiti’s cat­a­clysmic Jan. 12 earth­quake, when reporters unearthed tax records of his char­ity, Yéle. The char­ity has been a boon for Jean in Haiti, where its name is syn­ony­mous with his. But out­side the coun­try Yéle’s rep­u­ta­tion is less than stel­lar. In Jan­u­ary, the Smok­ing Gun pub­lished tax records show­ing Yéle had made pay­ments to Jean’s busi­ness inter­ests, though Jean later tear­fully insisted that the agency had cleaned up its act.

A New York Times exposé on Yéle’s activ­i­ties pub­lished Mon­day raised new ques­tions about how Yéle has spent the more than $10 mil­lion it’s raised since the earth­quake. (Jean led the char­ity until Aug. 5, when he stepped down to focus on his pres­i­den­tial bid.) Among the rev­e­la­tions about how cash was used: $7 pay­ments to 200 indi­vid­u­als to sur­round the singer at a rally announc­ing a new jobs pro­gram (they were then report­edly sent home), and incon­sis­tent, or nonex­is­tent, deliv­er­ies of sup­plies to relief camps Yéle claims to sup­port, theTimes reported.

Jean defended the char­ity in a state­ment from wher­ever he’s await­ing the council’s deci­sion, refer­ring to a “new man­age­ment team” and telling AOL News, “The admin­is­tra­tion of the group was a bit naive, but once we started to get dona­tions from all around the world, the first deci­sion I took was to reform management.”

The more press­ing mat­ter fac­ing Jean now is whether he is con­sti­tu­tion­ally eli­gi­ble to run. Out­go­ing pres­i­dent René Pré­val all but hand­picked the council—and he is back­ing another can­di­date. The coun­cil missed its Aug. 17 dead­line for rul­ing on which can­di­dates may run, and has given no rea­son for the delay other than not­ing that it is con­sid­er­ing the eli­gi­bil­ity of some 20 other candidates.

It may be that Jean’s attor­neys, who were at the council’s office plead­ing the singer’s case Tues­day, made an impact. Then again, the delay may sim­ply be a symp­tom of Hait­ian bureau­cracy. “Every­thing this elec­toral coun­cil has ever done has been late, so a three-day delay is not itself unusual,” says Brian Con­can­non, a lawyer and Haiti human-rights expert. But mate­r­ial the coun­cil is weigh­ing, includ­ing a video that shows Jean brag­ging about his man­sion out­side Haiti, along with a new acknowl­edg­ment from the star that he paid Amer­i­can taxes, sug­gests his can­di­dacy is not a sure thing.

Haiti’s 1987 Con­sti­tu­tion requires that can­di­dates live in Haiti for five con­sec­u­tive years prior to a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, sched­uled this year for Nov. 28. Jean’s cam­paign has not said he meets this stan­dard. Instead, it has argued that his role as a good-will ambas­sador for Haiti exempts him from that require­ment. Pré­val gave Jean the appoint­ment in 2007. But even if the ambas­sado­r­ial exemp­tion had a basis in Haiti’s Constitution—it does not, accord­ing to Concannon—Jean would still have to account for his res­i­dency prior to 2007.

The singer him­self acknowl­edges he has owned and paid taxes on U.S. prop­erty dur­ing the last five years. Fed­eral tax author­i­ties placed a $2.1 mil­lion lien on his home in Sad­dle River, N.J., in May to cover unpaid taxes dat­ing back to 2006. Jean has told AOL News that he set­tled the debt. After reports in 2008 that prop­erty he owned in Miami had been fore­closed, he braggedon video, “My man­sion is in New Jer­sey. Miami was a play house.” A spokes­woman for Jean’s cam­paign did not imme­di­ately respond to a request for comment.

Regard­less, Jean appar­ently remains opti­mistic that Hait­ian author­i­ties will make an excep­tion for him. Among the e-mails he sent to the AP on Tues­day was a one-word mis­sive: “Hope.” He says his can­di­dacy is a nat­ural next step in a post-music career help­ing poor Haitians.

He is seek­ing to lead a nation with a long his­tory of dys­func­tional gov­ern­ment and power grabs, and that has been buf­feted by floods, hur­ri­canes, and earth­quakes. With the gov­ern­ment unable to pro­vide ser­vices, Haiti has become a mag­net for aid organizations—as many as 10,000 work there, accord­ing to an April report by the United States Insti­tute of Peace, a research group. A pow­er­ful polit­i­cal elite remains entrenched. Many Haitians owe alle­giance to Pré­val. Oth­ers still sup­port twice-ousted ex-president Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide, whose for­mer party has been banned and who lives in exile.

As an out­sider, Jean could change that dynamic. He is pop­u­lar with Haitians, half of whom are under 21. The more of them who vote—no small chal­lenge, given the need to iden­tify and reg­is­ter poten­tially hun­dreds of thou­sands of young vot­ers before the election—the bet­ter his chances may be. Jean also might draw sup­port from older vot­ers: at a recent rally, crowds report­edly sang a tra­di­tional song in sup­port of Aris­tide, but replaced his name with Jean’s. On the other hand, Jean is part of the so-called Hait­ian dias­pora, which many natives view with suspicion.

Even as some jeer Jean’s less-than-perfect French and Cre­ole, he says his inter­na­tional expe­ri­ence is an asset that would allow him to bet­ter har­ness the efforts of the dis­parate relief NGOs work­ing in Haiti. Many Haitians would agree that, with much of their coun­try still under rub­ble months after the earth­quake, they do need a uni­fy­ing and ener­getic leader. Not all are per­suaded Jean is the man. He is “a polit­i­cal neo­phyte whose star power is unques­tion­able, but his under­stand­ing of Hait­ian and inter­na­tional real­ity is way below par,” says McCalla, the adviser to Haiti’s U.N. envoy. “A Clef pres­i­dency is a non­starter for progress in Haiti.” By Fri­day, Jean and his puta­tive con­stituents will find out whether he will get the chance to prove himself.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/18/wyclef-jean-hides-away.html