In Denver, Colorado, an African-American was chosen for the first time as the presidential candidate of a major political party on the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King's "I have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. That Barack Obama, an African-American, was chosen by the Democratic Party itself was an historic event.
It demonstrated to the rest of the world how democratic principles are invoked and applied in the political process of the United States. As I mentioned previously in this column (see "Demonstration Effect of Democracy at Work," July 2, 2008), it is only possible in the United States.
Barack Obama did not mention the name of Martin Luther King, Jr. even once in his entire acceptance speech; nor did he refer to King as an African-American. Obama merely called him as "a young preacher from Georgia." Nonetheless, it is undeniable that the "American promise" he was speaking of is part of the American dream to which Dr King referred.
King said "a dream" he has is "deeply rooted in the American dream." And Obama is the embodiment of King's dream: "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character." That's why Obama did not mention the colour of his skin. Obama closed his acceptance speech by the preacher's words:"We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead. We cannot turn back." That is Obama's worldview which transcends not only the question of races and ethnic minorities, but also bridges the gaps that separate them and unite them for common interest toward the realisation of the American promise of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."
His achievement is an American dream. Born in Hawaii to a black Kenyan student and a white American from Kansas in 1961, he was raised by his mother until he was ten in Jakarta, Indonesia and later by his maternal grandparents in Hawaii until his graduation from high school. He graduated from Columbia University in 1983.
After working in New York for four years he moved to Chicago to work as a community organiser in Chicago's South Side for three years. He entered Harvard Law School in 1988. He was elected the first black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1991. He didn't take any of conventional Harvard Law graduates' law career course.
Instead, he chose to go back to Chicago to teach at the University of Chicago Law School while he was working on a voter registration project in 1992. Obama is no ordinary man, to be sure. He turned down all offers from top-notch Wall Street law firms, and what did he do, instead?
He took up a voter registration project in Chicago, and eventually he became a State of Illinois legislator from 1997 to 2004. He became a United States Senator in 2004. But as a political aspirant, he was just an ordinary citizen. He didn't have any particular family connections, nor did he have financial resources of his own.
I doubt that the power of his sheer intellect, vision, energy, and compassion alone was enough to catapult Barack Obama to the national prominence on the political landscape. There must be more to it than the particular individual's competence, organisational skills, and personality at the given moment of the political context.
It is the political process that would enable ordinary individuals of political aspiration to enter political arenas to be elected. By ordinary individuals I mean individuals who do not have financial and political connections or leverage derived from family lineage, and personal financial resources.
In short, any democratic political process should be accessible to anyone who aspires to be a political leader, and who is going to tell him/her if he/she is good enough to represent people in an electoral district? Voters themselves! And they may contribute to his/her campaign funds!
As Barak Obama was chosen as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, about the same time across the Pacific, Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda announced on September 1, 2008 that he would step down, citing a political stalemate in his efforts to implement key policies amid precipitately declining support ratings.
"It is necessary to try to implement measures under a new framework...I thought now is the best time (to resign) to avoid a political vacuum," Fukuda, 72, told a hastily convened news conference. His resignation comes less than one year after he launched his government and just a month after reshuffling his Cabinet.
Fukuda, the son of former Prime Minister Takeo Fukuda, took over the government from Shinzo Abe on September 26 last year after Abe resigned abruptly for health reasons, having himself taken over from Koizumi a year earlier. Opposition parties characterised Fukuda's sudden resignation as "irresponsible."
Unhappily, his abrupt resignation followed the equally abrupt resignation of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe less than a year ago who succeeded Mr Ichiro Koizumi who had served as Prime Minister for five years before he resigned. Mr Koizumi discharged his responsibility as Prime Minister.
The timing of Fukuda's resignation announcement itself was doubly surprising, in that he undertook a major Cabinet reshuffle on August 1 this year, which did not engender an intended support to his sagging popularity and that only on August 29 did the government unveiled an economic stimulus package that it said was worth 11.7 trillion yen to ease the impact of rising energy and material costs.
Mr Abe and Mr Fukuda resigned abruptly from Prime Ministership after just one year shy of two weeks and after less than one year (shy of three weeks), respectively. Why did these politicians throw the towel so quickly? I must note that there is a certain sense of virtue or self-righteousness in the act of resignation: a notion of self-sacrifice in the broader interest of a political party in which he belongs.
Mr Fukuda "inherited" his father's constituency to be elected to Parliament when his father, Takeo Fukuda, former Prime Minister retired in 1990. After all Fukuda junior is the first son of Fukuda senior. Mr Abe is likewise from a political family. His grandfather and father were politicians.
His mother was a daughter of Mr Nobusuke Kishi, Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960. Like Mr Fukuda, Mr Abe also "inherited" his father, Shintaro Abe's constituency after the latter's death in 1991 and was elected to Parliament in 1993. For some reason all these men of blue blood with impeccable lineage could not perform well; they failed to meet the challenge of their respective responsibility as Prime Minister of Japan.
Each one of them quit his duty in less than one year in office! Why? Were there a real drive for that job and a deep-seated determination to achieve it? I wonder. Any inheritance is something that is handed over by the generosity of the benefactor. By definition, you did not earn it by your sheer determination and efforts. Surely, such "inheritance" of an electoral constituency cannot be part of the political process envisaged for democracy.
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