Obama should not be a trophy president

ZIMBABWEANS everywhere celebrated the election of Senator Barack Obama as President of the United States of America and so did many Africans and African-Americans who are now hopeful that with this Black man in the driving seat, there is hope for a seismic policy shift in the United States and a reconnection with the rest of the world.

One of the reasons why Sen. Obama was elected, besides the effectiveness of his campaign, his intelligence and his powers of oratory, is because many people were fed up with Washington and its policies which are divorced from reality. Many people questioned the war in Iraq and America’s unilateralism or aggression towards weaker states.

Sen. Obama got support from many people who were fed up with the detached leadership of George W. Bush, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Many people do not doubt the sincerity of these men when they say they want to protect their countries’ democracy from being threatened. We believe them. We do not think they are inherently bad people and when they wake up everyday and look in the mirror, they truly see themselves as good people who want to make change and protect their countries.

But they forgot one thing: There are many countries in the world, not just their own. There are so many interests in the world. There are also good countries outside of the G7/G8 fold. There are also very important countries elsewhere in the world that could help their own countries achieve their objectives.

For instance, Britain and the US are now looking to China and the Arab world to help resolve the global financial crisis. Gordon Brown last week said he was asking Arab countries to contribute to the International Monetary Fund to help resolve the global financial crisis. He qualified his statement by saying he was not going with a “begging bowl”. But we know he was. He was in that region three months ago, trying to persuade them to reduce oil prices again with no “begging bowl”.

President Bush is looking to China – whom America already owes trillions of dollars – to help bail them out, yet we hear (in Bush and president-elect Obama) that America is still the strongest country in the world. It is no longer. There has been a power shift in the world and the countries of South East Asia are changing the global power distribution, and the West has to look elsewhere for cues.

President-elect Obama will have to show that he can bridge that divide – that he can make the connections that Bush and his Allies failed to make, if the world is going to be a better place – after all he campaigned on that ticket and the world is watching.

President-elect Obama will also have to fight for the connection of Washington and those who have fought for civil rights, for so many years in America. He is their only hope and he campaigned on that ticket too, although he specifically avoided mention of those two words in his campaign – ‘civil rights’. Nowhere did we hear Sen. Obama campaign for civil rights, which is one reason why the Rev. Jesse Jackson made the lurid comments he made about him, for which he later apologized.

Rev. Jackson who shed tears on the eve of Sen. Obama’s election, could have had a mixture of emotions – that finally a Black man was going to be President, but also that the speech made was devoid of direct talk about civil rights and about the plight of Blacks in America, who suffered years of slavery and second-class citizenship – are still suffering today. Rev. Jackson was there on the fateful night when Rev. Martin Luther King was assassinated and these events are very significant to him and the Black (minority) people he represents. He was a presidential hopeful himself, who campaigned on a “civil rights ticket” in the eighties.

We cannot prejudge President-elect Obama. He has shown some leadership thus far, but we also remember that he made a speech to the US Senate on March 15 2007 to the effect that “regime change” should be supported in Zimbabwe. He has also reached out to MDC leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, but not President Mugabe. We believe that for Sen. Obama to understand the true picture of Zimbabwe, and before he makes public statements about Zimbabwe, he should reach out to stakeholders in the country. The MDC leader is not infallible and neither is President Mugabe. Any outsider who wants to understand the struggles that Zimbabwe has gone through, is going through, will go through, will have to reach out to all persuasions in the country.

Just like we will not prejudge the Black President-elect, he should not prejudge our country, but should help resolve our crisis – and the crisis of the many millions of Blacks, Hispanics, Indians and other minorities in America.

We hope ‘President Obama’ will not be a token president who will be used by the powers-that-be in Washington to justify Black inclusion in American politics knowing fully well that the levers of power are still in the white-controlled institutions crafted centuries ago. Obama has made a giant step, but the small strides being made by Black people daily are very crucial as well.

Trevor Philips, Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality in Britain made an interesting observation this weekend. As one of the most prominent civil rights campaigners in Britain, Philips told The Times newspaper: “If Barack Obama had lived here (in Britain) I would be very surprised if even somebody as brilliant as him would have been able to break through the institutional stranglehold that there is on power within the Labour Party.” It has to be said that the same “institutional stranglehold” is still existent in America. We wait to see whether Obama’s appointments will reflect the racial composition of the United States. He should not favour Blacks simply because he is Black, but he should not just favour Whites as well. He should strike a balance in appointments and include skilled Blacks, Indians, Hispanics, etc in his administration.

Those who have been following the campaigns by Sen. Obama will agree that he ran a spirited, rainbow campaign. His rallies were filled with all races and he was loved by everyone. He had record attendances in Berlin, Germany. That spirit should be carried forward to his administration – he should have a rainbow administration.

Indications so far are that there will be very few changes in Washington, which is sad. If, as President, Obama does not address the plight of the Black and minority populations in America, it will take centuries to address those issues and Obama will only remain as a token President to silent those who thought America was never ready for a Black President.

 If he manages to address those issues he would have created a precedent that will have a domino effect on the rest of future administrations in America (Black-led or White-led). He will be the standard by which to measure any future administration’s efforts at extending civil liberties to minority groups.

That Sen. Obama chastised those people who did not believe in what he termed “American democracy” at his winning speech in Chicago on Tuesday last week, was unfortunate. Many of those people who did not believe in “American democracy” are the suffering populations in America – the Blacks, Hispanics, the Indians and others. These communities have been at the receiving end of the brutality of a system Obama was fighting in his campaign.

Interesting last note: Sen. Obama’s speech to hundreds of thousands of supporters in Chicago – one of the most widely-watched and repeated political addresses in recent history was partly written in a flat in Notting Hill, West London by a twenty-seven year old White man. Nothing wrong with the skin colour of the speech-writer, but when the speech fails to address the issues of civil liberties that have been at the forefront of Black and minority campaign for many years and fails to mention the forerunner to the cause (like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson), one wonders what type of administration to expect under “President Barack Obama”.

philipmurombedzi@yahoo.com