Michel Martelly

Michel Joseph Martelly (French pronunciation: [miʃɛl ʒozɛf maʁtɛli]; born 12 February 1961) is a Haitian musician and politician who served as the 47th president of Haiti from 2011 until his resignation in 2016. On 20 August 2024, the United States sanctioned him for trafficking drugs, in particular cocaine, into the United States, and for sponsoring several gangs based in Haiti. Martelly was one of Haiti's best-known musicians for over a decade, going by the stage name Sweet Micky. For business and musical reasons, Martelly has moved a number of times between the United States and Haiti. When travelling to the United States, Martelly mostly stays in Florida. After his presidency, Martelly returned to his former band and sang a carnival méringue entitled "Bal Bannann nan" (Give Her the Banana), as a mocking response to Liliane Pierre Paul, a famous Haitian female journalist in Port-au-Prince. As a singer and keyboardist, "Sweet Micky" is known for his Kompa music, a style of Haitian dance music sung predominantly in the Haitian Creole language, but he blended this with other styles. Martelly popularized a "new generation" of kompas with smaller bands relying on synthesizers and electronic instruments. From 1989 to 2008, Martelly recorded over a dozen studio albums and a number of live CDs. As a musician and club owner in Haiti in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Martelly became associated with the neo-Duvalierist Haitian military and police, including figures such as police chief Michel François, and he agreed with the 1991 Haitian coup d'état against Jean-Bertrand Aristide. In 1995, after Aristide had been restored to office, Martelly's name appeared on a hit list of coup supporters, and he stayed away from Haiti for almost a year. During this time, he released a song, "Prezidan" (on the album Pa Manyen), "an exuberant ditty that called for a president who played compas". However, he did not run for political office until 2010, when he became a candidate for President of Haiti. After the catastrophic earthquake, Martelly won the 2010–11 Haitian general election for his party Repons Peyizan (Farmers' Response Party), after a run-off against candidate Mirlande Manigat. Martelly had come in third in the first round of the election, until the Organization of American States forced Jude Célestin to withdraw due to alleged fraud. Martelly assumed his position of the President of Haiti on 14 May 2011 after René Préval retired to his home in Marmelade. His election campaign included a promise to reinstate the nation's military, which had been abolished in the 1990s by Jean-Bertrand Aristide. He resigned as president in February 2016. He was sanctioned by the Canadian government, which accuses him of involvement in human rights violations and supporting criminal gangs, on 17 November 2022. For the political scientist Frédéric Thomas, the accession to power of Michel Martelly in 2011 marked the beginning of a "form of legal banditry" and constitutes a key step in the process of decay of the Haitian state.