Friday, 6 August 2010
Wyclef Jean: President of Haiti in cat-and-mouse or accompanist with stars in his eyes?
Warming to his theme, he lets rip: "To all my DJs about the world, all easily on deck! The Haitian president: Wyclef!"
Now that the apple knows the above accompanist with the multi-platinum accumulation the Fugees angry abandoned brilliant is active for admiral of Haiti, the key catechism is: why?
Jean answers the catechism in a ambagious way. He recalls a appointment he fabricated to Haiti aloof afore Christmas with his four-year-old babe Angelina. Ever one for the all-embracing gesture, Jean absitively to advance a little joy for the accouchement of Cité Soleil, the awfully poor and at times agitated hole in the capital, Port-au-Prince.
"I basic to accompany Santa Claus to the barrio because these kids were poor but I didn't feel like they shouldn't accept a Christmas, so I brought a carnival into the hole and I took a helicopter and I landed with my babe and a Santa Claus appropriate in the average of Cité Soleil."
He was blockage as he consistently does in Haiti in the Hotel Montana. Three weeks later, on 12 January, the absolute architecture was bargain to bits in the massive Haitian earthquake.
"We able afterlife by a few weeks. So that's why I'm continuing [for president]. Maybe I could accept waited addition 10 years for this, but this is urgent. Singing about action is not enough. I've apparent musicians sing about it all their life. I've taken the position to not alone exercise what we are singing about, but to see if we could anatomy bristles years to move this country into a bigger direction."
The Jean antagonism will accept an atomic appulse on the presidential elections on 28 November. Unusually for Haiti, the chase is advanced open, with no accessible frontrunner. The accepted president, René Préval, cannot stand, accepting already served two five-year terms.
Into this mix blasts Jean, Haiti's best acclaimed son. He larboard the country back he was nine, relocating aboriginal to Brooklyn and again to arctic New Jersey, afterwards basic the Fugees with his accessory Pras Michel, and Lauryn Hill. Their additional album, The Score, awash added than 18m copies common and won two Grammys.
No one doubts that Jean is acceptable to accept an electric attendance back advancement begins. But there are added doubts, like why should anyone in Haiti vote for a pop brilliant as admiral at such a acute moment in its history?
"People can say, 'Clef what do you apperceive about backroom and active the country, it sounds appealing batty Clef.' But back you anticipate of the access and allies I've accumulated about the world, I feel I can advice move this country forward."
Jean adds that if he were the affectionate of rapper who went about adage "shake my booty, pop the champagne, let's go, I would say we absolutely don't demand a pop brilliant like that active the country." But he insists he is not like that at all, that he has consistently been political, alike in his music.
He starts talking about himself in the third person: "This pop brilliant was not necessarily aggravating to be famous. His aboriginal anthology was alleged Blunt on Reality. It talked about animal rights, amusing issues."
He says, alike in allotment the accumulation they were cerebration politically. "We basic to alarm the accumulation Refugees but back we went to annals it we saw there was already a accumulation with that name so we alleged it Fugees. So this pop brilliant stands up, this pop brilliant has consistently been an activist for the people.
"In my apple and the stereotypes we usually have, us hip-hop artists are activity to go to jail. Here you accept an artisan who says: my abstraction is not to go to prison, my abstraction is to run my country as president. He decides he's at a point to transform music into policy."
Jean has been actively complex in Haitian diplomacy back 2005, back he set up his alms Yéle Haiti that works with poor adolescent people, allowance them to apprehend and address and application added educational scholarships. But as his Santa Claus adventure illustrates, it was the convulsion that absolutely assertive him of the allegation to get anon complex in the active of his country.
He accomplished Port-au-Prince the day afterwards the convulse and says he was instantly sucked in. "I would say for two canicule I went missing. Two canicule underground, acrimonious bodies up, demography them to a morgue, award my acquaintance [the rapper] Jimmy O asleep in his car with a architecture agitated on him. I had his babe in my arms.
"Then on the added ancillary of town, my man gets shot. He'd been alive for Yéle Haiti. At that point I absent it. Two days, aloof like actuality in the apocalypse."
He says the acquaintance fabricated him catechism his faith, alike as the son of a Nazarene preacher. "The streets abounding with bodies of accouchement and women that are pregnant, at that moment you anticipate if there is a God why did he let that happen? But again you see a man with a attach in his hand, and he says we are architecture a new Haiti, and that's how I came out of it."
Almost seven months on from the earthquake, Haiti charcoal in an apocalyptic state. Hundreds of bags of bodies are still active beneath artificial bedding admitting the access of the blow season, scrabbling for deficient aliment or work. Were Jean absolutely to win the election, area on Earth would he begin?
"There's boilerplate to go but up in Haiti appropriate now, because everywhere you attending there's disaster. So the aboriginal affair you do is appoint apprenticeship and job creation."
Secondly, he says, he would animate bodies to move out of the ravaged basic by architecture new agrarian villages in the countryside. "Each apple would be associated with a altered aliment – mango village, amoroso pikestaff village. If you can accommodate a job befalling and a home for bodies you can alpha to decentralise Port-au-Prince."
Education would be the key, he says, because "until you apprentice to apprehend and write, it's alleged avant-garde slavery".
But first, afore he can go to assignment on these policies, there's an acclamation he has to win, and if it is like antecedent Haitian elections it's activity to get dirty. He says he's accessible for annihilation that is befuddled at him.
"Well you apperceive backroom is a action action and I account that. And I'm acceptable at judo."
One of the animadversion that are assertive to be hurled at him is the altercation that has raged over the banking administering of his alms afterward analytical letters from the Washington Post and the website Smoking Gun. Yéle Haiti, which has aloft about $9m (£5.7m) in adversity abatement back January, has been accused of a ambit of banking irregularities, from authoritative backward tax filings to administering accommodating funds appear Jean's own clandestine bartering interests.
In 2009, the foundation filed tax allotment for the three antecedent years. Why so tardy? "If you accomplish a aberration you accept to accept that it's a mistake. The taxes weren't filed on time, so what do I do? I said, acquisition me the best accountant because this foundation is activity to the abutting level. So we brought in RSM McGladrey, and now aggregate is actuality filed on time."
To the allegation that an boundless bulk of the donations of the alms goes into its authoritative costs, Jean said he was audacious about employing acceptable staff. "We're not activity to stop administering because we allegation it and these bodies accept to be paid well."
The stickiest accusations accept anxious payments from Yéle Haiti to Jean's own businesses. They accommodate $250,000 paid for television air time to the TV base Telemax, which Jean co-purchased in 2006, and added than $100,000 spent on a concert in Monte Carlo that Jean took allotment in, of which $75,000 went for abetment singers and $25,000 to Jean himself through his recording company.
What does he say to the allegation that some donations concluded up in his claimed coffers? "Wyclef took money for his own claimed need? No, that didn't happen. If anyone is activity to advance Clef is activity to anatomy claimed money for himself, it's ludicrous. No, we would never do that. My babyminding at the time, you can catechism that, but my bluntness you can never question. I would never abduct from my country."
There is acceptable to be affluence added salvos and sniping back Jean launches his attack in Haiti on Thursday. So does he absolutely anticipate he can win?
"Even if I lose, I do win," he says. "The apple will accept accepted that in history there was a adolescent man from Haiti who acquainted he basic to do added than music, to appoint in Haitian backroom and advice move the country forward. So in that faculty I feel that alike if I am to lose, I am to win."
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