Wyclef Jean: The hip-hop star bidding to run Haiti

Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born hip hop superstar, plans to run for the country's president. So what are his chances of winning?

Ravaged and ruined by the earthquake that hit in January, destitute Haiti "now has another force of nature heading its way", observes The Times. Wyclef Jean, the Haitian-born hip hop superstar, plans to run for president. "America has Barack Obama and Haiti has Wyclef Jean," he proclaimed to "crazed" fans as his cavalcade swept through the shattered streets of Port-au-Prince last week.

However, Clef, as he's known, is hardly on peak form professionally, says The Independent on Sunday. His music career peaked with the Fugees in the mid-1990s, and subsequent solo albums have been "a study in the art of diminishing returns". So what makes him think he's qualified to run for the presidency of Haiti? In a word, vocation, says Time. The son of a Nazarene preacher, who emigrated to New York when he was nine, Jean likens himself to "a modern-day Moses, destined to return and lead his people out of bondage". He views the earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people, as the biblical event that sealed his calling.

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