WILL A FLIP OF THE ELECTION COIN BRING CHANGE TO HAITI?
(AOL) - By Emily Troutman, Contributor
Edgard and his father, Frantz, have a difference of opinion. On Sunday, the two men went to the polls in Haiti's first presidential election since the earthquake.
Edgard and Frantz live in the same battered house. They voted at the same crowded polling station. They both traveled the same dusty distance to arrive, past cigarette stands and soft drink sellers.
On the surface, the two have a lot in common -- a last name, for example. But in this story, you will not find it. Edgard and Frantz are not even their real names. Edgard, age 25, doesn't want to cause his father any more trouble.
The results of the election won't be announced until March 31, but it has long been fraught with trouble, pitting stately former first lady Mirlande Manigat against a folksy outsider, singer Michel "Sweet Micky" Martelly.
Madame Manigat appealed to older voters, while Micky appealed to the youth. She called forth voters' dignity, while he reminded them of their humanity.
When the first round of votes put Manigat in first place and the newcomer in third, his followers took to the streets in protest, until finally their voice was heard.
For the second round, it was M.M. versus M.M. Two candidates with, more or less, the same ideas but wildly different approaches. Haiti became a house divided.
"For me, she's landed. And she's flown from here into the sky," 53-year-old Frantz said about his favorite, Manigat.
"I walked a long way to vote for Martelly," his son responded.
Edgard's young friends laughed and cheered him on, as his father crumpled his nose and rolled his eyes. Frantz turned to go to work, then turned back.
He handed his son a coin. Edgard slipped it into his pocket, and with the gesture, both men grew silent.
A Change of Heart
It wasn't always this way between them. Frantz and Edgard live in Solino, the hidden Port-au-Prince slum where Manigat opened the second round of her campaign.
The neighborhood was never considered a stronghold for the candidate -- nor the slums or the city in general. But she carved out a following, and when I visited last month to track down a story, Edgard was one of her biggest fans.
He stood on a ladder and climbed up a light post to hang her banner. He waxed poetic about morality and the need for education. He is young, but not brazen. One of the good ones -- bright, button-up.
"I'm voting for Manigat because she can do something for young people like me," he said then, offering his chair.
He was exactly the demographic Manigat wanted. But it was Edgard's father who convinced him.
"I told him there was no other choice," Frantz said. "Because I believe in education, and my son is an intellectual."
Frantz himself is a mechanic, but he made the effort to send his son through high school. Frantz also received some schooling, and to him, Manigat was a serious candidate for serious people.
Edgard is his only son, and like all well-intentioned fathers, Frantz built his boy a life made of ladders. Primary school and high school. With any luck, university next and a career, not a job.
Edgard made an effort too. He fell in with the right crowd and stayed there.
Education but No Jobs
In 2006, 25 young people in Solino received scholarships, and most of the recipients became fast friends. Edgard used his precious scholarship to go to high school. He met his best friend there, Jean.
They watched as their older neighbor, Dennis, left for a university in Santo Domingo.
Dennis used his funds to study management. More important, he got out.
The boys formed a sort of gang in Solino, to counter the real ones.
These 25 scholarships were given to them by the Pink and White Foundation (Fondation Rose et Blanc). The charity was founded by Haitian musician, and now presidential candidate, Michel Martelly, along with his wife, Sophia.
When Manigat campaigned in Solino, she rallied the crowd, asking, "Do you want every child in Solino to go to college?"
"Yes!" the crowd replied.
Jean remembered her speech and its effect on his community. "First of all, we already have a lot of people around here that went to college. She never asked them, 'What are you doing with your life?' " he said.
"Life has taught me the diploma is not useful," said Dennis, who speaks fluent Creole, French and Spanish and holds a degree in management and marketing. After he finished school in Santo Domingo, he came back to Solino. An indignity was made worse when he couldn't find work.
"I've dropped off my resume from charity to charity, looking for a job. I work in a factory.
Making coats," he said. It wasn't his dream.
On Election Day, Dennis, Edgard and Jean pulled up chairs under a tarp to explain to me how, over the past month, they all came to change their vote. Behind them, laundry hung to dry across an empty field of rubble. Women peeled onions in the shade nearby.
"Come around 6 a.m. and you'll see a lot of young men sitting around here, talking. Come back at noon and you'll see the same thing," Dennis implored.
"I Want to Buy ... Stuff"
"My concern is to get a job, not to go to university," Edgard said. "I want to get money in my pocket. I want to buy ... I don't know, stuff. Sneakers! And there, I find myself in the Martelly political plane."
Jean said the pressure to be an "intellectual" has crippled the younger generation. A lot of Haitian people crave sophistication, he said, without valuing simple work.
"When I started school for mechanics, people asked, 'Why?'"
Manigat, a Sorbonne-educated Ph.D., has her heart in the right place, Edgard said. "It's not like we're crazy about Martelly."
Over the last month of her campaign, Edgard never felt "seen" by Manigat, in the same way his father constructed for him an impossible dream.
Frantz admitted that he shielded his son from the shop and from learning mechanics. It never occurred to him that his own life was good enough, and now better, than most.
Under the ragged gray tent, sitting among friends, Edgard reached for the coin his father gave him and held it out into the light. He takes his father's money, but he's come to resent it.
"I'm 25 years old, and if I don't ask my dad, I can't get five gourdes in my pocket to eat," he said.
In truth, both Frantz and Edgard want the same thing: for Edgard to become his own man. But how?
Did he vote for Martelly to find his future or to defy his father?
"I voted for change," he said.
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