| The Barack Obama phenomenon (2) |
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| Written by Reuben Abati | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Friday, 06 June 2008 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Barack Obama phenomenon (2) ON February 10, I had written in a piece of the same title that although Barack Obama is the biggest issue in American politics today, his ambition may fail ultimately on the altar of racial politics. Race may well still be a critical sub-text in the coming contest between Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate and Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party, as America elects its 44th President, but at this moment, what has happened in American politics and to America is a historic revolution. It has reaffirmed the United States as the land of possibilities, where anyone who dares to dream and hope can pull down existing barriers and touch the sky. It is a great moment for the United States and its democratic process. It does not matter whether Obama wins the Presidency in November or not, his achievement so far is already the stuff of legends, and to be fair, having gone this far, there is no reason why he cannot, or should not make it to the White House. Obama's candidacy on the platform of the Democratic Party should gladden the hearts of all immigrants in the United States; it should imbue them with hope that their children and their grandchildren, can also in the future break out of all ceilings: race, colour and language, to achieve the proverbial American dream. Son of an immigrant father from Nyangoma-Koyelo in Kenya, and a white mother, Barack Obama has surpassed "the dreams of his father". He has also lent big wings to the dreams of the black man in America and elsewhere. Martin Luther King had a dream, that revolutionary dream is close to fulfillment. No other black man in American history has gone this far in American politics. On Tuesday, June 3, Barack Obama stepped into the American Hall of Fame as the first black man to emerge as a Presidential candidate. But the significance of Obama's victory does not simply lie in his blackness; it is a message, indeed a much stronger message for all outsider communities and groups in the American society that it is possible for anyone at all to travel from the "log cabin to the White House". Obama campaigned on the platform of change, hope and unity, he touched the average American where his dreams or her dreams lay. Under a war-mongering and uninspiring George Bush Presidency in the United States, the average American is desperate for change. Obama represents that change and hope in more than one package: change at the level of race, change at the level of ideas, change at the level of generation. The first half of his campaign was energetic, inspiring and unstoppable, the second half was tentative as he lost in nine out of the last 14 states, but Obama and his team had managed to capture the public imagination, such that although this was a race which began in early 2007 involving so many candidates in two political parties, it ended up soon as an Obama race with Mrs. Hillary Clinton as the deutragonist. Internationally also, the year 2008 will be remembered as the year of Barack Obama: his clinching of the Presidential ticket of the Democratic Party is a tribute to careful planning, political strategy, aggressive fund-raising methods, management of public perception, and innovativeness. Obama is the archetypal American creation: he broke out of the mould, he managed to say all the right things, he did all the right things, and he has now been rewarded for his doggedness, his charisma, and the symbolism of his candidature. The moment was also right. The credit is as much his as Team Obama's. His arch-rival, Mrs Hillary Clinton lost the battle at the level of strategy. In the early moments, as the Obama machinery rolled out, the Clinton camp underestimated Barack Obama, and by underestimating him, they allowed his strategists to seize the initiative in small and big states across America. By the time Mrs Clinton woke up to the game, the Obama train had become unstoppable. Who would have thought that a black man will destroy the status quo? Obama's triumph over Mrs Hillary Clinton is like winning the world heavyweight boxing championship. Mrs Clinton had all the advantages, with a superior name recognition, and a former President-husband and the party establishment behind her. Obama's emergence on Tuesday is an open declaration that Americans are becoming tired of dynasties: father-son, husband-wife relay race at the Presidency; and it is the party establishment which about 16 months ago had more or less crowned Mrs Clinton that has now been forced to eat the humble pie as the superdelegates joined the rush to endorse Obama. Nonetheless, there is something to be said for Mrs Clinton and her determination. She ran a courageous race and stood firm till the end. She may not have been graceful in the face of defeat, but her efforts and example represent a victory for women. No other woman in American history has travelled this far politically in terms of achievement since the American women's suffrage. The attempt to denigrate her in the event of the Obama triumph is uncharitable. When all is said and done, she will return to her seat in the Senate. The rabid dismissal of Mrs Clinton has been most evident outside the United States particularly here in Nigeria where the Obama-Clinton race and the entire US Presidential primaries have been embraced with the same ardour with which Nigerians watch the World Cup tournament or the English Premiership. Indeed the US Presidential Primaries was like the English Premiership league, the Republicans had settled their side of the bargain very early in March with John McCain's emergence on Super Tuesday, but the Democrats continued the football match, from state to state, stadium to stadium, until Obama zoomed past the required number of 2,118 delegates on Tuesday. Just as Nigerians buy English club side jerseys, just as they form associations to support English teams, they did the same for Obama. Obama stickers can be found on cars across Nigeria. At the Lagos State House of Assembly, some of the lawmakers set up an Obama Nigeria Initiative movement and openly campaigned for him. This week, a Senator moved a motion on the floor of the Senate asking that the National Assembly should endorse Barack Obama. This local attraction to Obama is based simply on the presumption that "he is one of our own", a black man like us, and a source of inspiration to all the would-be immigrants to the United States who have been searching for the most elusive US immigrant Visa, but who are nevertheless optimistic that they too will, some day, achieve the "dreams of their fathers," or their children will. Nigerians love good things in other lands, even if they are not making any effort to reproduce the same at home. If Obama had been a Nigerian, his race, colour and age would have been an intractable problem. But in the United States, the Obama/Clinton race brought out all the polarities: experience/idealism, gender/sex, black/white; name/ideas; past/future only for the conflicts to be resolved at the level of ideas, and by the people of the United States whose right to make a choice was the most beautiful factor in the long campaigns. We saw the candidates going from state to state, city to city seeking the people's support, begging for their votes. This or that candidate may have been endorsed by established figures in the American society, but there was no Godfather telling the Americans who to choose. In Nigeria, the party elders would have resolved the matter long ago by anointing a candidate. Even in the Republican Party, President George Bush was careful not to be seen to be interfering with the democratic process. Many Nigerians love Obama. If he had been a Nigerian politician seeking their support, those same Nigerians would have queued up in front of his house to ask for bribe, in exchange for their votes. Those super-delegates would have demanded cartons and lorry loads of money, knowing that they wield the power to tilt the balance. Indeed, here, even if Obama had won the vote and all the delegates, the leadership of the Democratic Party could have chosen to cancel the primaries and start afresh, or even introduce new rules that would exclude Obama or whoever they do not like. We have seen how the candidates engaged the electorate, here in Nigeria we have had cases of candidates emerging as winners of elections in which they never registered as aspirants. In total Obama has spent just about three years as a Senator, and four years as Senator in the state of Illinois. He is just 46. If he had been a Nigerian, he would have been told to wait and allow older people to run. Obama has the gift of the gab. Here, he would have been told: "na grammar we go chop". His insistence on change would have been pooh-poohed. His contemporaries out of sheer envy would have said: "is he the only one, who does he think he is?" And they would have struggled to pull him down even without being commissioned to do so by the opposition, or the Clintonites. In the last Presidential elections in Nigeria, Pat Utomi had wanted to be President. He shares a lot in common with Barack Obama. Well-educated, well-spoken, has a good grasp of issues and has demonstrated a passion for the common good over the years. He ran a vigorous campaign criss-crossing Nigeria on the platform of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), but what was the main response to Utomi: "oh yes, he is a good candidate, but Nigeria is not ready for a good candidate yet." While losing sleep over the US Presidential primaries, Nigerians should ask themselves these questions: when will Nigeria be ready for a good candidate? When are we going to start running campaigns that are issues and merit driven. The energy, the enthusiasm that is being devoted to Obamamania by the Nigerian Middle class should now be translated into sustained advocacy for the growth of democracy in Nigeria. There are Nigerians who claim that they contributed money to the Obama campaign fund. The same persons will be reluctant to put their money where their heart is in Nigeria. Obama's strongest message was one of possibility: Yes, we can. I will like to see young and old Nigerians stand up in the face of the rot in our lives and consider the option of change, unity and hope and say like Obama: yes, we can. It is through such faith that a Nigerian dream can be constructed.
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Posted by Robot| 06.06.2008 00:25