As Walt explained in "A Haïtienne who won't be feeling too much pain" (13/1/10), the lovely and fragrant Ms Jean was (supposedly) a "refugee" from Haïti -- this was before the big earthquake -- who came to Canada as a teen and immediately attracted the attention of an older white guy (surprise!) who married her and got her a job at Radio Canada (the French arm of the CBC). Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin named her as the representative of Her Britannic Majesty because she (Ms Jean) was: a black, female "refugee", who was bilingual and a certified member of Canada's chattering classes. Too bad she wasn't disabled, but 5 out of 6 ain't bad.
The big question in 2010 was what to do with Ms Jean after her term as G-G expired? She had acquired a taste for the perqs of the vice-regal style -- the mansion, the limousine, the servants, and her very own regiment of soldiers. Hard to go back to living like a peasant. So favours were called in and, following the disastrous earthquake of 12 January 2010, Madame Jean (as she became) was appointed the United Nations "Special Ambassador for Haïti", to help raise money for the people of that wretched country.
Mme Jean immediately went to, errr, Paris, to establish an office and a residence suitable to her new position and regal lifestyle. After that she appeared on TV a few times -- notably on the CBC, of course -- but if she ever set her dainty feet in the dust of her native land, her visit went unrecorded. Ed. has asked Dr Google who has come up with nothing.
But every cloud has a silver lining. Since she was already comfortably ensconced in Paris, Mme Jean immediately began campaigning for a better job. With the support of both Canada and Québec, she was elected in 2014 as Secretary-General of la Francophonie, an international talking shop which likes to think of itself as the French equivalent of the British Commonwealth. Since the Franco-phony's mission is to talk and talk (in French) and do nothing (in any language), Mme Jean was the perfect fit.
Just as the British Commonwealth has its queen, so la Francophonie now had its queen, or empress... whatever... Mme Jean immediately moved into more palatial digs, racking up queen-sized expenses befitting her status. After all, the surrender-monkeys surely wouldn't want the head of their "organization" to lack anything that the British monarch had, would they?
After four years of wretched excess, Mme Jean's term came to an end this month. To no-one's surprise, Mme Jean refused to go gracefully, and campaigned hard for a second term, even though she was considered a long shot. She appealed to Canada and Québec for their support, and thought she had Canada's ultra-liberal Prime Minister Just In Trudeau -- an ardent feminist and admirer of non-white persons -- on her side.Sadly for Mme Jean, she was wrong. Last Friday the member nations of la Francophonie, meeting in the well-known French-speaking nation of Armenia [Eh? Ed.], chose a Rwandan, Louise Mushikiwabo, as their new queen/empress/secretary-general. The Rwandan politician said she did not intend to make major changes to the direction of the organization, but she promised more transparency in its spending. Errr, yes....
Some observers have said Canada made a geopolitical calculation in abandoning Jean in favour of the African candidate, hoping it would help its bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council in 2020. Mr Socks, however, denied that Canada abandoned Jean in exchange for African or French support for the Security Council bid, saying the government had wanted a second term for Jean.
"But at the same time we recognized — and it’s a question of simple math — that if there’s an African consensus around a particular candidate, we would respect that consensus," said the Canuck PM, who is himself likely to be turfed out in a year's time. "That is simply the way things unfolded." Errr, yes... yes indeed.
