HAITI'S NEW PRESIDENT: UNEXPECTED BUT UNDERSTANDABLE

Port-au-Prince, April 5 (CNN)- It was just before Christmas when Michel Martelly mulled over events in his troubled land and concluded that everything had been done to ensure loss for him at the polls.

An election rife with fraud had ousted him from the race. Martelly's dreams of leading Haiti were all but dead. But four months of recounts, reviews and a runoff changed everything and the unexpected candidate is poised now to move into the presidential office.

Unexpected because Martelly has never been a politician. He's better known as "Sweet Mickey," a popular kompa singer who enthralled his fans with a bad-boy antics on stage. He cursed and swayed with a bottle of Barbancourt rum in his hands and on occasion, mooned his audience.

It's an image that Martelly said he cultivated for the stage. Still, it led many to question whether he was fit to run a nation as beleaguered as Haiti. Already the poorest nation in the Western hemisphere, Haiti is reeling from devastation caused by last year's massive earthquake followed by a cholera epidemic later in the year.

A perceived lack of progress prompted Haitians to vote against the government-backed candidate. Martelly, they said, was a fresh face in politics, untainted by the corruption that has marred many a presidency in Haiti.

"To Haitians, particularly the legions of young and jobless, Martelly is an outsider who can bring change to Haiti," longtime Haiti observer Jocelyn McCalla said on Twitter.

Martelly's victory was a continuation of a signal the Haitian people have been sending for a while, said Gary Pierre-Pierre, editor and publisher of the New York-based newspaper The Haitian Times.

"They don't want the establishment. They don't want the status quo”.

On the streets of Port-au-Prince, thousands turned out to chant one of his most popular nicknames: "Tet Kale," which means bald head in Creole. Haitians, especially the youth, were starving for a fresh face. And they got it Monday when the election council announced preliminary results.

Martelly won by a landslide with 67.6% of the vote, soundly defeating his challenger, former first lady Mirlande Manigat, who received 31.5%.

The runoff vote came after weeks of review of the November balloting that resulted in the ouster of the government-backed candidate, Jude Celestin. It was exactly what Martelly had hoped for back in December when he laid out for CNN his plan to lift Haiti out of its misery.

Martelly appeared in jeans and a button-down shirt at his plush home in Peguyville, a suburb of Port-au-Prince high up in the hills. A silver arm cuff hugged his right wrist and he sipped hard on his favorite ice-cream soda. He sat at a table surrounded by a piano and eight wall-mounted speakers. It was not hard to tell this was a musician's home.

Haiti, he said then, was on the brink of revolution.

"This is a very dangerous corner in Haiti's history," he said. "But it's a revolution that can be done peacefully through the election”.

Under the father-and-son Duvalier dictatorship, Haitians lacked freedom but the people had clean roads, electricity, jobs, security, Martelly says. When democracy came overnight to this Caribbean nation, people didn't know how to handle it.

Martelly spoke of 24 years of troubled times, of a poor country that, he said, hurtled backwards into even more poverty.

"We are ruled by corruption," he said. "The people have no confidence in their government”.

Then came political turmoil with a presidential election in disarray.

"You know how (U.S. President Barack) Obama said it's not about the man, but it's about the plan?" he said. "Here it's more about the man than about the plan”.

Haiti will go nowhere, he said, unless the people have a president they can trust, a president who is honest. He was that man, he insisted.

"I've been on the ground with them for 22 years. The people know me. I represent the light at the end of the tunnel”.

But the man also had plans.

He said, for instance, that the $12 billion that was pledged by the international community for earthquake assistance should come in the form of infrastructure, not money, because Haitians don't know how to manage money.

"People are fed up here," he said. "They have no food, no education, no health care. What kind of place is it when a young girl will sell her body to buy a phone card?".

So what makes a man who made a name with dance music think he can change things in Haiti?

Martelly flashed his signature smile; the light glinted off his tet kale.

"Well," he said. "Look at what the politicians have done”.

<