Actor Sean Penn totally unloaded on Wyclef Jean’s bid for the presidency of Haiti on Sunday evening, questioning Wyclef’s motives and for being a “non-presence“ and being “virtually silent” as an ambassador for the beleaguered country. Wyclef fired back with a set of his own choice words.
Penn, the 49-year-old Academy Award-winner who has been in Haiti since the devastating earthquake totally demolished the infrastructure of the capital city of Port-au-Prince, accuses Wyclef Jean as being a ghost during the relief and rebuilding process, who only appears when the cameras come rolling.
“I’m not accusing Wyclef Jean of being an opportunist; I don’t know the man,” Penn told Wolf Blitzer, who was filling in for Larry King on CNN. “One of the reasons I don’t know very much about Wyclef Jean is that I haven’t seen or heard anything of him in these last six months that I’ve been in Haiti.
“This is somebody who’s going to receive an enormous amount of support from the United States, and I have to say I’m very suspicious of it, simply because he, as an ambassador at large, has been virtually silent. For those of us in Haiti, he has been a non-presence,” Penn added in the televised interview shot around the world.
Wyclef Jean, whose presidential aspirations have been rocked by the controversy surrounding his Yele Haiti Foundation and the accusations that he owes the IRS over $2 million, fired back at Penn. “He hasn’t seen me for six months — I’ve been going to Haiti for over five years,” Jean spat. “I am not absent in Haiti, maybe the tent city you’re in, maybe I’m absent in that.”
Penn says Jean’s finances and motives for running for presidency of the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere need to be subjected to further scrutiny.
But it is here that Penn seems to contradict himself. After saying he didn’t know Jean because he has been “absent” from the nation the last several months, Penn then gives Jean his props about his importance. Only you can’t know how important someone is if you don’t know anything about a person.
“I think he has an important voice. I hope he doesn’t sacrifice that voice by taking the eye off the very devastating realities on the ground, and the very difficult strategic future that it’s got in putting it back together.”
Was this a case of Penn trying to take a morally superior stance? Is Penn angry because he has toiled in relative obscurity for months in the tent cities while Jean gets all the press? Or is this a legitimate concern about Jean’s ability to lead the broken nation out of historical darkness? –terry shropshire
