Wyclef Jean's Pitch to Run Haiti

Wyclef Jean at a Timberland event before the earthquake in Haiti.

Image: File

Last year, Wyclef Jean was just a famous musician and hip-hop entrepreneur who hoped a partnership with Timberland would help steer some money to his charity to help his impoverished homeland of Haiti.

Then came the devastating earthquake this January that killed as many as 230,000 people and gave a new focus to Jean's efforts.

Today, we get confirmation that Jean wants to shift from being a humanitarian to being a politician. In an interview with Time, Jean said he wants to be Haiti's next president, and he plans to file for the November 28 election just before the August 7 deadline.

In the interview Jean gave to Time's Tim Padgett, he acknowledged that "it's a hard thing for people to take artists seriously" in politics. Yet Padgett does a good job showing how Jean takes Haiti seriously, despite some questions following the earthquake about what was happening to his organization's contributions.

Writes Padgett:

Yet serious doubts persist that Jean is ready for a role beyond that of goodwill envoy—most of them focused on his controversial management of Yéle Haiti. Shortly after the quake, when Jean had been all but canonized for his Haiti work, skeptics pointed out that his foundation had been paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to production companies owned by him or his associates. Florida, where the charity has an office, has sanctioned it four times in the past six years for disclosure violations, and watchdogs like Charity Navigator have questioned it for filing tax returns that were "beyond late." Jean has acknowledged the questionable payments, but blamed them on accounting errors. He insists the problems have been fixed since he hired a reputable Washington accounting firm to whip Yéle Haiti's books into shape. "I took responsibility," he says. "I took the bullet."

And now that he's getting into politics, Jean will have to confront a more aggressive press not only in Haiti, but here as well. The Smoking Gun, for example, has a story today about Jean owing the IRS $2.1 million.

Welcome to the circus, Wyclef.