Haiti: Wyclef Jean for president?

[Hannah Bell]

Wyclef Jean is going to run for the presidency of Haiti.

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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. As Kevin Pina writes in an article titled "It's not all about that! Wyclef Jean is fronting in Haiti":

" 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."

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..." JEAN ALSO produced the movie The Ghosts of Cité Soleil, an anti-Aristide and anti-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... 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--and that following the coup against Aristide in 1991, he was the "operations guy" for the FRAPH paramilitary death squad... It uncritically interviews coup leader Guy Philippe, without telling us he's a former Haitian police chief who was trained by U.S. Special Forces in Ecuador in the early 1990s or that the U.S. embassy admitted that Philippe was involved in the transshipment of narcotics...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/08/12/wyclef-for-president




Raymond Alcide Joseph is mostly known as a journalist. When he was 19 years old he established the first print shop and founded "Reyon Limyè" (Rays of Light), the first monthly Christian newspaper in Cayes Haiti. "Rays of Light" still exists.

He went to become a radio personality in the 1960’s, having founded the first radio broadcast in New York beamed against the Duvalier dictatorship. "Radio Vonvon" or "Radio Bug" was nicknamed the "Six O’clock Mass" because it hit the waves at 6:00 a.m. and was the broadcast not to miss.

Mr. Joseph translated the first New Testament and Psalms in Haitian Creole under the auspices of the American Bible Society in October 1960.

In the 70’s and 80’s he was at the Wall Street Journal in New York as a financial writer and co-founded, with his brother Leo Joseph, the Haiti-Observateur, the first crusading commercial Haitian weekly. The Observateur remains the premier organ abroad of the Haitian community.

In 1990 Mr. Joseph was called to be Haiti’s Chargé d’Affaires in Washington and his country’s representative at the Organization of American States. After helping with the first democratic elections in December 1990, he returned to the Haiti Observateur where he remained until he was called back to Washington in March 2004, where he is currently the Ambassador.

Raymond Joseph is a graduate pastor from the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, a B. A. holder in Anthropology from Wheaton College, Wheaton, Ill. He also has a Master’s degree in Social Anthropology/Linguistics from the University of Chicago.

http://www.haiti.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=73.