A Tale of Two Women at a Crossroads in Haiti

Feb 26, 2011 – 11:10 AM

Emily Troutman Contributor

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti -- Mirlande Manigat wants to be the president of Haiti. She is 70 years old. She is a professor, and she went to the Sorbonne.

Alexandra Delophene wants to go to school. She is 19 years old. She is a mother, and she had the baby when she was 17.

Last week, Manigat began the second round of her campaign in the small ghetto of Solino. As she rounded the corner, on her way to the stage, she passed by Alexandra's house. The teenager reached into the crowd.

"I told her I want to go to school and my mom can't afford it. The security agents were pushing on me, and I grabbed her hand," she said. "I cried out, 'I want to go to school!'"

 

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Mirlande Manigat, who is running for president of Haiti, greets a crowd in the Port-au-Prince neighborhood of Solino.

On Monday, she told me the story. All of Solino knows the story now. Alexandra is rail thin, but strong. Part-bird, part-woman. The neighborhood is small and busy. Crooked stacks of broken houses lean downhill, like plants growing toward an unseen light.

After Alexandra grabbed her hand, Manigat went on. The crowd swelled to a thousand. Manigat isn't especially popular here. She decided to restart her campaign in Solino, partially, she said, to prove she could.

On stage, Manigat was surrounded by a coterie of insiders and politicos. When she finally spoke, she continued their themes: Christianity, morality and education.

"I met a young girl on my way in. Where is she?" she asked the crowd. Alexandra, hidden, 50 yards back, was pushed forward and ascended the stage.

As they met, two different worlds would collide. Haiti's presidential race is battle for Alexandra's vote. But also, for Alexandra.

Contrast of Candidates

Manigat will compete in the March 20 election against Michel Martelly, the popular musician-turned-politician. Martelly is famous in Haiti for his bad-boy lifestyle, which he curtailed a decade ago.

 

Emily Troutman for AOL News

At a rally for Mirlande Manigat, candidate for president of Haiti, a crowd of about 1,000 gathered to hear her speak. This neighborhood is torn between Manigat, seen as the moral candidate, and Michel Martelly, known for his former bad-boy lifestyle.

But, oh, the stories. When he performed as "Sweet Micky" on the musical floats at Carnival, he used to moon the crowd, wear a skirt, booze, smoke. And as he told me months ago, "I would curse. And I mean curse."

Everyone here has shorthanded his most outrageous antics, to avoid the shame of saying them out loud. "The T-Vice story," especially, can make a grown man blush.

In politics though, Martelly has suited up and run a young, media-savvy campaign. He is smart and compulsively charming.

He is also, according to Manigat, immoral. Though she hasn't mentioned him by name in her speech yet, others around her do.

Last week, the mayor of nearby Petionville said, "Manigat is Jesus. And Martelly is Barabbas. Who are you going to vote for?"

In the Bible, Barabbas was a criminal, the man the public chose to save instead of Jesus. That turned out to be a mistake. Not only a mistake, but a humiliation.

The comparison is apt. Some historians suggest Barabbas and Jesus were the same person. And here, Manigat and Martelly are vying between Haiti's split personality.

Him: bandit, scapegoat, cowboy, wild card. Her: professor, "granny," "Mommy" and, of course, "first lady," as her husband was once president of Haiti.

"A granny? I am a granny! I am a grandmother!" she told me. "Look at my hair, I have gray hair.

"You know, for me," she said, "it's an expression of affection. You know they call me Granny and they call me Mommy too? And personally, I'm very flattered by that."

Manigat is the dignified, Christian, moral choice and, for many, an opportunity to actually be saved.

Attracting an Educated Crowd

Outside a hot, sunny tent at a private hillside college in Port-au-Prince, students arrive by foot and by taxi. Taxis are marked with a red ribbon around the rear-view mirrors of the early 1990s Toyotas, mostly banged up, repaired, breathless.

Their general condition belies the fact that taking a taxi is a luxury in Haiti. These students are among the lucky, rare, middle class.

 

Emily Troutman for AOL News

The presidential election in Haiti is a battle for Haiti's youth. Mirlande Manigat has positioned her campaign as the moral, Christian choice.

They're Haiti's best and brightest. And they've come for Mirlande Manigat's morning lecture on constitutional law.

Though she doesn't talk politics in the classroom, Manigat's students say the politician and the professor are identical.

"It's the same thing. She teaches the whole population like she teaches us. ... It's like a follow-up on school," one young student said about her stump speech.

What does she mean by morality?

"She thinks that you have to be moral to be a good politician. If you're not moral, you can't respect the constitution."

"It's like ... a leader who can follow up on a good principle and lead with dignity."

And immorality? They have trouble defining it. They say they know it when they see it.

"It's when you don't respect principles and some value as a human being."

Is a man wearing a skirt immoral? Is Michel Martelly immoral?

"It's really complicated," a student said. "There are two people, Michel Martelly and the personality. I don't really know him personally, Michel Martelly."

He said Micky's immorality is in his demeanor, somehow, and that's complicated.

"Micky is an educated person, but he doesn't have the same level as Madame Manigat. But then again, that always happens around the world, that some people can't access another level of education."

"I don't see myself, as a young person, in Martelly," offered one young man, softly and sincere. "They always say that if you can project a big light, you can be a little flash. He could've been famous and been a role model, but he wasn't."

Manigat's students are overwhelmingly, though not universally, planning to vote for her. They feel like she already voted for them.

"One thing that I see is that she opened her campaign at Solino. During her campaign, she has to pound on education and go to the ghetto areas and spread the message."

Alexandra Takes the Stage

"I met a young girl on my way in. Where is she?" Manigat asked the crowd. Alexandra was lifted onto the stage and into the candidate's arms.

 

Emily Troutman for AOL News

Mirlande Manigat hugs Alexandra Delophene, 19, who was brought onstage during a political rally.

"She said to me, 'I want to go to school. Because it's been a long time since I've been. So Mirlande Manigat, see what you can do for me.'"

Alexandra beamed.

"The second thing is," Manigat continued. "She had a child. At 17 years old."

The crowd listened. Alexandra recalls the experience: "I hid my face. I didn't want people to see me because of that."

"People were happy," she told me later. "But I guess, also thinking that if I wasn't acting like a whore, it wouldn't have happened."

And here is Alexandra: teen, mother, voter and, in her own mind at least, whore.

"Do you want everyone to go to university?" Manigat called out that day.

Yes! Answered the crowd. But Solino didn't really need an example. As Alexandra told me her story, Adeline, a neighbor, listened in. She is 17 and she has a baby, too.

"I was in love with him and we had sex. And ... it happened," she told me.

The baby's father is still in high school, though Adeline has never been to school at all. That was part of the appeal.

"He always talked to me about education," she said. "About going to school. He always talked about what it takes to fight with life, to move my life forward. He always gave me good advice."

For Alexandra, "I was at school at the time. We were classmates."

When she became pregnant, the school made her quit. Her baby's father is still in school.

"I'm not really in love with him. But what's happened has happened."

She lives with her ex-boyfriend's mother now, and Alexandra's little girl is poised to be the fourth generation of women in her family who can't read.

What's your favorite part about being a mother?

"I'd rather go to school," she said.

Alexandra was embarrassed by Manigat that day, but desperate. She is not educated, but she is also not ignorant -- smart enough to beg for school, to take her shot.

"I'm not angry, and I can't be angry because I need that. I really need that. Someone to pay for me to go to school."

Mirlande Manigat wants to be the president of Haiti. Alexandra wants to go to school.

But who is Alexandra? Jesus or Barabbas? Saint or sinner? What did Alexandra think about Manigat's speech on Friday?

"I didn't really pay attention," she said. "But she got my mom's phone number."