Haitian hip-hop star Wyclef Jean is not on the list of approved candidates who satisfy legal requirements to run in the country's Nov. 28 presidential election, an electoral official said Thursday.
Jean, however, told The Miami Herald after a meeting with President Rene Preval Thursday that he feels "we are going to be OK" when the list comes out Friday.
The presidential bid by the 40-year-old singer-songwriter and international celebrity had triggered widespread enthusiasm in his poor, earthquake-ravaged Caribbean homeland. But it had been challenged on the grounds he did not fully meet the requirements, including a key one on Haitian residency five years before taking office.
"He is not on the list as I speak," the electoral official, a member of the country's provisional electoral council who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
But Gaillot Dorsinvil, head of the electoral council told The Miami Herald ``the list does not yet exist. We are still awaiting the decision.''
Jean told The Associated Press that he felt the exchange with Preval was positive.
"I feel good," the hip hop artist and former Fugees frontman said. "I feel that the president that I voted for five years ago is the same person that was sitting in front of me today."
Jean was confident that he will be allowed to campaign.
"It looks like it's leaning that way," he said.
Several hours after the meeting, Jean posted a photo on his Twitter account of him shaking hands with Preval, who is not allowed to run for re-election after having served two terms.
Earlier in the week, Jean said he had received death threats. Jean on Thursday said Preval expressed concern and offered him security.
The Reuters source said the electoral disputes bureau entrusted with settling challenges to candidates had ruled that Jean did not meet several legal requirements, but he gave no more details.
Jean, who left Haiti with his family to live in New York at the age of 9 and launched his music career in the United States, was among 34 contenders for the Haitian presidency who filed their documents with the council this month.
On Tuesday, the provisional electoral council said it was postponing until Friday its announcement of the final list.
That sparked feverish expectation that has raised fears of political tensions and possible violence in the volatile Caribbean country.
Jean's jump into politics galvanized the Haitian political scene, triggering enthusiasm among the country's restless, widely unemployed youth, who see him as a refreshing symbol of home-grown hope, and alarm among the traditional Haitian political elite who seemed to feel threatened by him.
Slogans scrawled in Creole on city walls reading: "Youth supports Youth" and "Wyclef means change" testified to his support among the young, and youth and Creole musical groups had already declared their backing for his candidacy.
Haiti, the poorest state in the Americas, is still struggling to recover from a magnitude 7 earthquake that struck the teeming capital, Port-au-Prince, and surrounding area on Jan. 12, killing up to 300,000 people and dealing a crippling blow to the already underdeveloped economy.
The electoral council member told Reuters he had heard reports that some candidates might be preparing to stir up violent protests if their candidacies were rejected.
"I've even been told that they have already bought and distributed machetes. ... It's up to security officials to assume their responsibilities," he added.
"But we are doing our job and we will continue to assume our responsibilities regardless of what people do or say," the electoral official said.
U.N. and Haitian police have stepped up joint patrols in the still rubble-strewn streets of the capital, including around the electoral council headquarters. About 1.5 million homeless quake survivors are living under tents and tarpaulins in the streets of the hilly, ramshackle coastal city.
"I'm not a candidate who will promote violence," Jean told Reuters Wednesday, although he said then he had gone into hiding after receiving death threats.
Jean and his lawyers had argued he fulfilled the residency requirement to be a candidate.
They cited his Haitian passport, his rural family home at Lassere outside Port-au-Prince and his share in local commercial TV station Telemax. They say he has maintained a "constant presence" in Haiti since 2005, while arguing his appointment in 2007 as a roving "ambassador-at-large" for Haiti involved some inevitable absences from the country.
Other candidates who faced legal challenges were former two-time Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, Leslie Voltaire, a U.S.-educated urban planner and former minister, and Yvon Neptune, another former prime minister who served under former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
The initial presidential contenders not yet vetted by electoral authorities include Raymond Joseph, Jean's uncle and former Haitian ambassador to the United States, and well-known opposition leader and former first lady Mirlande Manigat.