HAITI ELECTION: One for the Rule of Law in Haiti, Zero for the Diaspora

Late Friday night, Haiti’s electoral council deemed Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born hip-hop star, ineligible to run for the presidency. Presumably, the council acted on a straightforward interpretation of the Haitian constitution, which requires presidential aspirants to have lived in the country for the five years preceding the date of the election, November 28th. Mr. Jean lives in the United States.

Only in a country with such pliant laws and messy elections—and so disgruntled an electorate—would such a candidacy be taken seriously. The prospect threw political rivals, journalists and especially the electoral council into a tizzy. The latter postponed its decision on which candidates to approve by three days, amid rampant rumours of alleged payoffs of council members. The resignation Monday of one of the nine council members prompted speculation that the council would implode.

Widespread political disaffection with electoral politics fed the hype. For the hundreds of thousands of jobless youth in Port-au-Prince, Mr. Jean embodied the potential for true chanjman, a Creole word that connotes far-reaching systemic change. He came from outside the generally disdained classe politique and professed an unmistakable love for his native land. But most of all, Mr. Jean was idolised for making it big—“from the hut to the projects to the mansion,” as the title of a recent album has it. To his many Haitian detractors love for the homeland and commercial success were not enough. They argued he was just another demagogue whose platform was based on solely on his personality—albeit one with limited local language skills (his Creole is heavily accented) and an apparent inability to balance a cheque book.

Mr. Jean urged his supporters to respect the council’s ruling. The streets of Port-au-Prince remained calm Friday night and Saturday morning, although that may have been in part because peacekeepers in riot gear warily guarded the city. Now that the celebrity circus over Mr. Jean has ended, attention will begin shifting to the 19 candidates who were approved. They include two former prime ministers, Jacques Edouard Alexis and Yvon Neptune, a host of other former government officials, and Michel Martelly, a bawdy compas musician known as Sweet Micky, whose candidacy survived a challenge to his alleged “immorality” based on an superb album entitled “400 Percent Kaka Live 2001”.This CD made the hit parade in Haiti. When is playing, one can smell the odor of shit in the air.

But the party to watch is Unity, which was created by the president, René Préval, late last year, and was widely assumed to have a lock on the National Palace until Mr Jean began discussing a run. Its presidential candidate is Jude Celestin, a former director general of the government construction agency. He is notable mostly for being an utter unknown to most of the country.

UPDATE: After suggesting at first that he would accept the ruling, Mr Jean declared on Twitter this Sunday that his lawyers would appeal it.