*Photo: Professor Kehinde Yusuf *
Americans go to the polls on 5 November, 2024 to elect their 47th President, and the election is attracting international attention.
This is understandable, because, among other reasons, America is perceived as the bastion of democracy and a standard against which many other democracies are measured. The quality of its presidential candidates, the tenor of their campaigns and the conduct of the election are therefore generating keen interest. The American system allows absentee voting (for those who are unable or unwilling to go to the polling stations on Election Day) and voting-by-mail. Voters who prefer any of these early voting options have already started casting their votes.
This year’s US election comes up about two months after the 23rd anniversary of the world-changing 11 September, 2001 Al-Qaeda bombing of critical symbols of American power.
President George W. Bush’s 20 September, 2001 speech to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People put the catastrophe in perspective as follows: “On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country. Americans have known wars – but for the past 136 years, they have been wars on foreign soil, except for one Sunday in 1941. Americans have known the casualties of war – but not at the center of a great city on a peaceful morning. Americans have known surprise attacks – but never before on thousands of civilians. All of this was brought upon us in a single day – and night fell on a different world, a world where freedom itself is under attack. … Americans are asking, why do they hate us?”
Among other answers, President Bush provided the following: “They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way.”
Conversely, in a video address, on 20 September, 2001, Osama bin Laden, the Al-Qaeda leader, said: “As to America, I say to it and its people a few words: I swear to God that America will not live in peace before peace reigns in Palestine, and before all the army of infidels depart the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him.”
Incidentally, the Israeli-Hamas war is currently raging with many around the world accusing the United States of strengthening the hands of Israel as it commits what is perceived as genocide and war crimes. In fact, Israel is a campaign issue in the US election, with the Republican Party’s former President Donald Trump saying as follows, in the presidential debate he had with incumbent Vice-President Kamala Harris of the Democratic Party on 10 September, 2024: “She hates Israel. … If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.”
The US election is also coming up at a time when the Russia-Ukraine war is raging, with America and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation supporting Ukraine; and with China, Iran and North Korea, among others, backing Russia. The election is holding at a time when Africa, especially Francophone Africa, is becoming increasingly hostile to America, and when the BRICS group of countries is waxing stronger as a fascinating alternative intergovernmental development platform.
Further denigrating Harris, Trump said: “She’s a Marxist. Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well. … Well, bad immigration is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. They have and she has destroyed our country with policy that’s insane. Almost policy that you’d say they have to hate our country.”
Here, Trump attempts to exploit the American predilection to be discomfited by association with Marxism. The reference to her father as a “Marxist professor in economics” who “taught her well” is thus an attempt to portray her as a dyed-in-the-wool or ‘congenital’ Marxist who is bad for America’s Capitalist economy.
In addition, demonising immigrants, Trump said in the debate: “…we have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums. And they’re coming in and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African Americans and Hispanics and also unions. … You see what’s happening with towns throughout the United States. You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country. And they’re destroying our country. They’re dangerous. They’re at the highest level of criminality. And we have to get them out. We have to get them out fast.”
To this, Kamala Harris responded: “[If] you want to really know the inside track on who the former president is, if he didn’t make it clear already, just ask people who have worked with him. His former chief of staff, a four-star general, has said he has contempt for the constitution of the United States. His former national security adviser has said he is dangerous and unfit. His former secretary of defense has said the nation, the republic, would never survive another Trump term. And when we listen to this kind of rhetoric, when the issues that affect the American people are not being addressed, I think the choice is clear in this election.”
In her 29 October, 2024 Ellipse Park, Washington, D.C., campaign remarks regarding Trump’s description of Democrats and others as “the enemy from within,” Harris said: “Donald Trump has spent a decade trying to keep the American people divided and afraid of each other. That’s who he is. But America, I am here tonight to say: that’s not who we are. … And the fact that someone disagrees with us, does not make them ‘the enemy within.’ … America, for too long, we have been consumed with too much division, chaos, and mutual distrust. … It is time to turn the page on the drama and conflict, the fear and division. It is time for a new generation of leadership in America. And I am ready to offer that leadership as the next President of the United States.”
Harris had also said in the presidential debate of 10 September, 2024: “I think you’ve heard tonight two very different visions for our country. One that is focused on the future and the other that is focused on the past. … And I do believe that the American people know we all have so much more in common than what separates us and we can chart a new way forward. I believe in what we can do together that is about sustaining America’s standing in the world and ensuring we have the respect that we so rightly deserve … I’ll tell you, I started my career as a prosecutor. I was a D.A. [district attorney]. I was an attorney general. A United States senator. And now vice president. I’ve only had one client. The people.”
America has never had a female President, contrary to what has become a global trend. For example, Indira Ghandi was Prime Minister of India, from 1966 – 1977 and from 1980 – 1984; Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 – 1990; Benazir Bhutto was Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1988 – 1990 and from 1993 – 1996; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was President of Liberia from 2006 – 2018; Jacinda Ardern was Prime Minister of New Zealand from 2017 – 2023; Salome Zurabishvili has been President of Georgia from 2018 till date; and Samia Suluhu Hasan has been President of Tanzania from 2021 till date. Given these endearing examples, will America vote in its first female president in this week’s election?
On 26 October, 2024, at a Michigan campaign for Harris, Michelle Obama remarked: “We are once again holding Kamala to a higher standard than her opponent. We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs. But for Trump, we expect nothing at all, no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals. … [We] are indifferent to his erratic behavior, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon, a known slum lord, a predator found liable for sexual abuse, all of this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do.”
Earlier in the speech, Michelle Obama said that she had had to ask herself, “Why on earth is this race even close?” She then passionately appealed to Americans: “I am praying that we consider the decades of sacrifice and struggle by all of our ancestors, the folks who marched and sacrificed and shed their blood for us. We have to ask ourselves: is a vote for Trump or no vote at all the way we honor their lives? And if that’s the case, well, that surely doesn’t sound like freedom to me. Because let me tell you, in any other profession or arena Trump’s criminal track record and amoral character would be embarrassing, shameful, and disqualifying.”
In these volatile times, the choice of who becomes the 47th President of the United States is that of Americans to make, and the process will be completed on 5 November, 2024, all things being equal. All things being equal? Isn’t that a strange proviso for an American election? From the electoral evolution which the Trump factor has set off, especially considering the 6 January, 2021 violent mob attack on Capitol Hill in rejection of the 2020 election results, and allegations already being made by the Trump camp that the 2024 early voting is being rigged, wouldn’t it be impolitic to take anything for granted? In fact, in the presidential debate, VP Harris said: “Donald Trump … has said … there will be a bloodbath, if … the outcome of this election is not to his liking.”
Consequently, the following adaptation of the YouTube-accessible admonition, in Pidgin English, to Nigerians by the US Consul-General, Lagos, Mr. Will Stevens, a day before the 25 February, 2023 presidential election, is a fitting one to Americans today: “My people, una well done o. My name na Will Stevens. … Election dis year na for [November 5th]. … I take God beg una, election no be war oo. No follow anybody fight because of vote. … God go bless [America]. God go bless [Nigeria] sef join.”
