By Charles Hin­ton, with edit­ing assis­tance from Kiilu Nyasha

To cut to the chase, no elec­tion in Haiti, and no can­di­date in those elec­tions, will be con­sid­ered legit­i­mate by the major­ity of Haiti’s pop­u­la­tion, unless it includes the full and fair par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide. Fanmi Lavalas is unques­tion­ably the most pop­u­lar party in the coun­try, yet the “inter­na­tional com­mu­nity,” led by the United States, France, and Canada, has done every­thing pos­si­ble to under­mine Aris­tide and Lavalas, over­throw­ing him twice by mil­i­tary coups in 1991 and 2004, and ban­ish­ing Aris­tide, who now lives in South Africa with his fam­ily, from the Americas.

A United Nations army, led by Brazil, still occu­pies Haiti, 5 years after the coup. Their unstated mis­sion, under the name of “peace­keep­ing,” is to sup­press the pop­u­lar move­ment and pre­vent the return to power of Aristide’s Lavalas Party. One must under­stand a Wyclef Jean can­di­dacy, first of all, in this context.

Every elec­tion since a 67% major­ity first brought Aris­tide to power in 1990 has demon­strated the enor­mous pop­u­lar­ity of the Lavalas move­ment. When Lavalas could run, they won over­whelm­ingly. In 2006, when secu­rity con­di­tions did not per­mit them to run can­di­dates, they voted and demon­strated to make sure Rene Preval, a for­mer Lavalas pres­i­dent, was re-elected.

Preval, how­ever, turned against those who voted for him. He sched­uled elec­tions for 12 Sen­ate seats in 2009, and sup­ported the Elec­toral Council’s rejec­tion of all Lavalas can­di­dates. Lavalas called for a boy­cott, and as few as 3% of Haitians voted, with fewer than 1% vot­ing in the runoff, once again demon­strat­ing the people’s love and respect for Pres­i­dent Aristide.

Fanmi Lavalas has already been banned from the next round of elec­tions, so enter Wyclef Jean. Jean comes from a promi­nent Hait­ian fam­ily that has vir­u­lently opposed Lavalas since the 1990 elec­tions. His uncle is Ray­mond Joseph (also a rumored pres­i­den­tial can­di­date,) who became Hait­ian ambas­sador to the United States under the coup gov­ern­ment and remains so today. Kevin Pina writes in “It’s not All about That!: Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti,” Joseph is “the co-publisher of Haiti Obser­va­teur, a right-wing rag that has been an apol­o­gist for the killers in the Hait­ian mil­i­tary going back as far as the bru­tal coup against Aris­tide in 1991.

“On Octo­ber 26th [2004] Hait­ian police entered the pro-Aristide slum of Fort Nationale and sum­mar­ily exe­cuted 13 young men. Wyclef Jean said noth­ing. On Octo­ber 28th the Hait­ian police exe­cuted five young men, babies really, in the pro-Aristide slum of Bel Air. Wyclef said noth­ing. If Wyclef really wants to be part of Haiti’s polit­i­cal dia­logue he would acknowl­edge these facts. Unfor­tu­nately, Wyclef is fronting.” As if to prove it, the Miami Her­ald reported on 2/28/10, “secret polling by for­eign pow­ers in search of a new face to lead Haiti’s recon­struc­tion …” might favor Jean’s can­di­dacy, as some­one with suf­fi­cient name recog­ni­tion who could draw enough votes to over­come another Lavalas elec­toral boycott.

Wyclef Jean sup­ported the 2004 coup. When gun-running for­mer army and death squad mem­bers trained by the CIA were over­run­ning Haiti’s north on Feb­ru­ary 25, 2004, MTV’s Gideon Yago wrote, “Wyclef Jean voiced his sup­port for Hait­ian rebels on Wednes­day, call­ing on embat­tled Hait­ian Pres­i­dent Jean-Bertrand Aris­tide to step down and telling his fans in Haiti to ‘keep their head up’ as the coun­try braces itself for pos­si­ble civil war.” Dur­ing the Obama inau­gural cel­e­bra­tion, Jean famously and per­versely ser­e­naded Colin Pow­ell, the Bush admin­is­tra­tion Sec­re­tary of State dur­ing the U.S. desta­bi­liza­tion cam­paign and even­tual coup against Aris­tide, with Bob Marley’s Redemp­tion Song.

Jean also pro­duced the movie “The Ghosts of Cite Soleil,” an anti-Aristide and Lavalas hit piece, which tells us that Pres­i­dent Aris­tide left vol­un­tar­ily, with­out men­tion of his kid­nap­ping by the U.S. mil­i­tary, and presents the main coup lead­ers in a favor­able light. It fea­tures inter­views with sweat­shop own­ers Andy Apaid and Charles Henry Baker with­out telling us they hate Aris­tide, because he raised the min­i­mum wage and sought to give all Haitians a seat at the table by democ­ra­tiz­ing Haiti’s econ­omy, a pro­gram opposed by the rich in Haiti.

It uncrit­i­cally inter­views coup leader Louis Jodel Cham­blain, with­out telling us he worked with the Duva­lier dictatorship’s bru­tal mili­tia, the Ton­ton Macoutes, in the 1980s; that fol­low­ing the coup against Aris­tide in 1991, he was the “oper­a­tions guy” for the FRAPH para­mil­i­tary death squad, accused of mur­der­ing uncounted num­bers of Aris­tide sup­port­ers and intro­duc­ing gang rape into Haiti as a mil­i­tary weapon.

It uncrit­i­cally inter­views coup leader Guy Phillipe, with­out telling us he’s a for­mer Hait­ian police chief who was trained by US Spe­cial Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s, or that the U.S. embassy admit­ted that Phillipe was involved in the tran­ship­ment of nar­cotics, one of the key sources of funds for para­mil­i­tary attacks on the poor in Haiti.

Wyclef runs the Yele Haiti Foun­da­tion, which the Wash­ing­ton Post reported on Jan­u­ary 16, 2010 is under fis­cal scrutiny, because “It seems clear that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of the monies that this char­ity raises go for costs other than pro­vid­ing ben­e­fits to Haitians in need … In 2006, Yele Haiti had about $1 mil­lion in rev­enue, accord­ing to tax doc­u­ments. More than a third of the money went to pay­ments to related par­ties, said lawyer James Joseph … (T)he char­ity recorded a pay­ment of $250,000 to Tele­max, a TV sta­tion and pro­duc­tion com­pany in Haiti in which Jean and Jerry Dup­lessis, both mem­bers of Yele Haiti’s board of direc­tors, had a con­trol­ling inter­est. The char­ity paid about $31,000 in rent to Plat­inum Sound, a Man­hat­tan record­ing stu­dio owned by Jean and Dup­lessis. And it spent an addi­tional $100,000 for Jean’s per­for­mance at a ben­e­fit con­cert in Monaco.” A foun­da­tion spokesper­son “said the group hopes to spend a higher per­cent­age of its bud­get on ser­vices as it gains experience.”

PLEASE SPREAD THE NEWS: “WYCLEF JEAN IS NOT A FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC MOVEMENT OF HAITI.” The float­ing of his can­di­dacy is just one more effort by the inter­na­tional forces, des­per­ate to put a smi­ley face on a mur­der­ous mil­i­tary occu­pa­tion, to under­mine the will of the Hait­ian major­ity by mak­ing Wyclef Jean the Ronald Rea­gan of Haiti. Let us be clear. Jean and his uncle, the Hait­ian Ambas­sador to the U.S., are both cozy with the self-appointed czar of Haiti, Bill Clin­ton, whose plans for the Caribbean nation are to make it a neo-colony for a recon­structed tourist indus­try and a pool of cheap labor for U.S. fac­to­ries. Wyclef Jean is the per­fect front man. The Hait­ian elite and its U.S./U.N. spon­sors are count­ing on his appeal to the youth to derail the people’s move­ment for democ­racy and their call for the return of Pres­i­dent Aris­tide. Most Haitians will not be hood­winked by the likes of Wyclef Jean.

Char­lie Hin­ton is a mem­ber of the Haiti Action Com­mit­tee and works at Inkworks Press, a worker owned and man­aged print­ing com­pany in Berke­ley. He may be reached at ch_lifewish@yahoo.com.

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