Elections in Yemen and the U.S., an unjust comparison [Archives:2008/1212/Opinion]
Abdu Saif Al-Qasali
To start with, I will not congratulate the U.S. president-elect Barak Obama, who is ancestrally from Africa, for the victory he scored in the most recent American presidential elections. However, I will specifically congratulate the Arab and Muslim leaders for the election of Obama as a caliph for Muslims, particularly as those leaders were the first people to congratulate Obama, and how they congratulated him made me imagine Obama as a caliph for Muslims, not a President for a Christian state that proved to be evidently biased on the Israeli occupation of Arab lands.
We should also not forget that this Christian state is responsible for a state of insecurity and lawlessness in Iraq, plus crimes against humanity that took place in the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq and in the Guantanamo detention center in Cuba.
Undoubtedly, Obama's win to lead the strongest state in the world shocked those interested in U.S. politics as the man is black, of an African origin and a poor family. His father was Muslim and had an Arabic name [Hussein], which is why many Arab and Muslim leaders now bet that the new American leader will treat them differently, compared to the treatment they received from previous U.S. administrations, be they republican or democrat.
Certainly, a particular complex will remain with Obama and the black man is expected to do his best in order to get rid of this complex. He is bound to be more Christian in order to confirm to his Christian state that he has no relations with Islam. He is also expected to deal with white people as if he is whiter than them in order to avoid charges of discrimination and bias in favor of black citizens.
The first message made by Obama was very clear to the Arabs and Muslims, who celebrated his victory, and to the conservative Jews. Through this message, Muslims and Jews may know the real face of Obama in his leadership of the United States. The message is that of Obama's selection of the Israel Jew Ram Emanuel, a member of the U.S. Congress, to hold the post of White House Chief of Staff.
This choice was hailed by Israel and denounced by the Arabs. In addition, the Reuters News Agency quoted special sources as saying that more than 80 percent of potential nominees to occupy the post of Secretary of State and other key posts in the new U.S. administration are either Jews or have relations with the Israeli lobbies in the U.S. This fact may limit the optimism of the majority of Arabs and Muslims, most notably the leaders with expectations of positive relations during the term of the new U.S. President.
Why are the Americans lucky?
I apologize to the kind readership since I seem to have digressed from the title of this article. However, I realize that it is unjust to compare the Yemeni elections with the U.S. ones. The Americans are lucky they don't have a ruling party named 'General People's Congress'. They don't have a ruling party to control the official satellite channel in favor of its candidate.
In the U.S., there are thousands of satellite channels and the government can't intervene in the policy of any of them. All the media outlets in the western country are independent and liberated from the government's dominance. In the U.S., there are neither official newspapers, an information ministry nor a 'Lawzi' [Yemen's information minister], and the Republican Party that has been ruling the state for eight years under Bush doesn't exploit the state's resources in favor of its candidate. And Obama did not win because he is black.
It is the legacy left by the republican Bush in the U.S. that led the Americans to punish the Republican Party through the ballot boxes. What happens in the Western state is totally different from what happens in the Arab states where the people are held responsible for mistakes committed by their leaders. Whenever a leader commits a mistake, he turns to punish his people for what he himself did.
Source: Marebpress.net
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