| The Obama Affliction, then Carrington's Insults |
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| Written by Godwin Okpene | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 24 October 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Obama Affliction, then Carrington's Insults It is amazing how much American politics we have been plagued with these past months. First, we are completely absorbed in the personality of one American politician trying to become the president of his country, then another one uses the process of American presidential politics to taunt and insult us. One event (Obama's ambition) is taking place in far away America while the second one took place on that day Walter Carrington sat with some of our brothers, at the Ken Nnamani Centre, to make jest of us. As it happens, my problem with that gathering in Abuja was that it was dominated by too many hypocrites and so much hypocrisy. Mr. Carrington began by telling us that his country (America) is not like Nigeria where only money bags achieve electoral success. And then we cheered long and hard, the same way we always do when others tell us we are good for nothing, never do wells. At once I wished I was there to inform Carrington that, while we may not have the democracy we desire, we certainly do not aspire to the kind of democracy that supports repressive rule in Colombia but not the clear expression of popular will in Venezuela; not the kind of democracy that sees nothing wrong in propping up unelected governments in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but endorses the brazen invalidation of clearly democratic choices in Algeria and Palestine. While most presidential elections in Nigeria have produced exaggerated results for contestants who would have won anyway, we have not had the kind of election where the popular will was so dramatically altered by the manipulations that took place in Florida in 2004. I would also have informed Mr. Carrington that the politics of godfatherism in Nigeria has not, and will never, produce a father and his son as presidents within a single generational cycle. Yes, we regret that they are money bags around here whose resources can determine the outcome of electoral contests. But Mr. Carrington probably did not know that some of us know that in the last nine congressional elections in America, the winners spent, on average, three times as much money to get elected as those they defeat in those same elections, and that you need to spend twice as much money as your opponent to become a senator in America. And we also know where most of the campaign money in America is coming from – rich lobbyists with selfish interest who expect to be rewarded when these politicians eventually get to power. They are also known to handsomely reward politicians who support their causes – for instance, 'opposition' politicians who voted for the Iraq war got four times more money from the oil and gas corporations than those who voted against the war. In the current election, both candidates have received more money from these lobbyists than they have received from any single group, with the current frontrunner (Obama) receiving more than twice the amount given to McCain. We also know that overall, the current frontrunner has raised and spent twice as much money as the man trailing him in the polls. Mr. Carrington probably does not also know that we are aware that those who ran the most expensive campaigns in the last nine congressional elections have won about 70% of those elections. And when I thought the incumbency factor is such a big deal here in Nigeria, I found, to my amazement, that incumbency reelection rate in America is a whopping 97%! This would be an outstanding feat even here in Nigeria. And of course ours is not a democracy that thrives in fabricating falsehood as a pretext for attacking sovereign nations, just because they cannot fight back. We uphold civilized norms, and will respect international resolutions in our disagreements with other countries, even when it is small Cameroon. Then there is the hypocrisy of the chief host at that Abuja gathering. It is Chief Ken Nnamani, who seems to find fault with every election except the ones that he benefited from. It is hard to believe that this is the same product of those terrible elections in the South East in 2003. Yes, this was the same person who got anointed by that Abacha's party (UNCP) over and above the man who had earlier emerged through the party primaries. And they were so many other hypocrites. But let's get back to that guy whose problem is not necessarily that of hypocrisy. So much has been said about the Obama candidacy and what it means for the new face America wants to show to the world. The other half of the discussion has focused on the historic significance of his presidency to American politics as well as the black race. But I prefer to be bothered by the kind of issues that bother those of us in the continent for whom the size of the loaf on our breakfast tray presents a lot more headache than the number of rings America is drawing around the 'axis of evil' or the size of the bombs they are dropping on those who are hapless enough to cross their path. What should bother us should necessarily not go beyond how the vision of each presidential candidate coincides with the development necessities of the world's smallest peoples. When I first noticed Mr. Obama on the floor of the US senate, I felt the same excitement I always get whenever a black man assumes any kind of prominence in America. It is that sentimental reaction that lingers only for as long as it takes for it to become difficult for you to distinguish between the habits of our own 'brothers' and the white people we have not trusted in the first place. When this (in the words of Mrs. Clinton) "young intelligent African American" became an instant hit with the American people, I felt something that did not seem quite right about this fairytale ascendancy of this 'outsider' whose breed could not even dream of getting on any kind of ballot in that country just four decades ago, all of two odd centuries (then) after the Americans began their romance with majority rule. In a country still very much at home with racially segregated religious congregations, why this sudden love by the white folks for a black man, and one straight from Africa for that matter? Yes, this logic is so blatantly skin deep, I know. But it also happens to be the color of all these Obamamania around here. When they first lined up behind him against Madam Clinton, my guess (and the standard wisdom then) was that Americans were expressing their distaste for this husband and wife arrangement that the Clintons were about to introduce into America's presidential politics. My doubts, though, was – why reject the chance of circulating the presidency within a union that is, in truth, the product of two different biological progenies when the same Americans not too long ago allowed this father and son arrangement that kept the American presidency within the Bush and Bush family, twice within one generation, three out of a total five consecutive presidential terms, twelve out of twenty consecutive presidential years? And when, eventually, Obama started getting on top of McCain (arguably the most moderate high profile republican of this generation) I was convinced there is more to it. Then I stumbled on that famous Obama tribute to President Reagan (the most overtly conservative president in a long while), whom he described as the man who "changed the trajectory of American politics", and I began to understand why. Because we are talking about this same Reagan, who for all intents and purposes never even pretended to be a friend of small people. Reagan, the father of the modern Anglo-American triumphalism! It is the same Reagan, the initiator of America's awesome Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), the architect of that famous Star Wars program, the most audacious military project ever contemplated by America. But this discussion is still not about Reagan. It is about the implications of an Obama presidency for those of us who want to believe he is one of us enough to feel our pains and to know how to cure it. As I watched the last presidential debate, it became clearer why Mr. Obama is not an apostle of free (international) trade, the one policy issue which development experts have held up as the surest route out of the cycle of dependency that has prevented the Third World from taking full charge of its economic destiny. But of course we already knew where Obama stands on free trade when one of his policy spokespeople took the message all the way down to us here in Abuja (at the last ThisDay Townhall Meeting). According to Mr. Lawrence Summers, Mr. Obama does not believe in the kind of free trade we are demanding because "he believes that global integration must not come at the expense of local (American) disintegration" because, "we cannot allow the idea that we (Americans) should have a more global economy become a reason why we (Americans) have to, for competitive reasons, scale away all the productive regulations that protects our environments or protects our (American) products, all in the name of globalization". So we get a whiff of what a possible Obama presidency means for us, plus America will continue to show its might whoever is inside the White House; because America will always want to be feared around the world. The new pacifism within a segment of American society, mirrors what is emerging as the classic American survival mentality: They would react to a major military misadventure (like Iraq) by taking a break to tend to their bruises (like after Vietnam), but will surely show up later to huff and puff about how the lessons they learned from their last outing prepared them for a new brand of warfare. They don't spend all those billions (of defense dollars) for nothing. They won't stop spending just by having Obama in the White House. They will continue to spend, and will always look for someplace to justify all the expenditure. Inevitably, there will always be an America where one half (republicans) are working very hard to confirm their strength on America's security and the other half working twice as hard to prove they are not weak on national security. Surely, America will not suddenly stop fabricating wars just because the next tenant of the White House is a black man. At the last count, both presidential candidates have each received about the same amount of money from the defense corporations. Back to Obama's 'sparring' with McCain at the ThisDay Townhall Meeting, here is what Mr. Obama's promoter had to say about the candidate. "He (Obama) believes that the important power of the United States is in part its military power – ultimately we are free because we are strong and we are strong because we are free". The rest of America is aware of this, and they love him for it. For me, the more I take my eyes (like those characters in Orwell's Animal Farm) from one candidate to the other and back to the one, the harder it is to figure out which of these creatures the small people of this world can trust enough to call their friend. Godwin Okpene Abuja
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Posted by Robot| 25.10.2008 07:29