Wyclef Jean does not give up candidating
Wyclef Jean, the Hip-hop singer, declared that he is not abandoning his presidential candidature and will try to get the courts to turn around a decision that disqualifies him from the race.He declares, from his home in Croix des Bouquets, that his lawyers will file an appeal with the national electoral dispute office. He says that he is in the possession of a documents saying that everything is correct and says that whatever is going on here is related to the Haitian politics. Haiti’s elections board rejected Jean‘s candidacy because they consider that he is not meeting all the residency requirements, although the board did not cite a specific reason. Under Haitian law, a candidate for the presidency is required to have lived in the country for five consecutive years leading up to the election. Jean invoked that he was not required to comply with the law because President Rene Preval named him a roving ambassador in 2007 and he was allowed to travel and live outside the country.
The officials in Haiti are worried to some extent that Jean’s supporters will create a bit of a political fuss after his candidacy was rejected but he asked them to remain calm, and there were no significant election-related protests or violence over the weekend. Though there are rumors about a large protest planned for Monday. Many people from Jean’s hometown of Croix des Bouquets which is in fact a suburb of the capital Port-au-Prince — are supporting the singer in his quest for the presidency. Although at some point last week saying that he accepts the committee’s final decision, Wyclef Jean, aged 40, says that he is going to appeal the Haitian board’s decision because it rejected his president candidacy before the national electoral dispute office made a final ruling on the residency issue. The board accepted 19 candidates and rejected 15. This issue could have been easily settled down if the council had explained the reasons of their decisions, as officials from the Joint Mission of Electoral Observation, a division of the Organization of American States and the Caribbean Community said.
Jean said had planned to leave the country this weekend to visit his family which lives in New Jersey, but has changed his mind and decided to stay in Haiti to see the appeal process through. after informing the AP of his decision Jean announced on his Twitter feed that he is appealing the decision of the CEP because he met all the requirements set by the law.
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