Congratulations Barack Obama! (Plus, Nepali Political Culture)
Eye on America: I was glad when I heard about Barack Obama’s victory. I was equally impressed by his victory speech in which he full heartedly praised his rival Hillary Clinton. I found Hillary’s praise of Obama in her speech this morning (evening in the US) also very impressive. What a enviable politics. I envy such friendliness among competitors because we hardly see such gestures in Nepali politics and we really need such political behavior in this difficult times. Competitions in our politics are mostly very dark and unhealthy. Low level attacks against the opponents are frequent. This past week is the perfect example. CPN Maoist chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal (aka Prachanda) launched lowly attacks against other political parties (namely Nepali Congress and CPN UML) and the media (namely Kantipur). The there was Jhalanath Khanal, general secretary of the UML, who fired back in the same way. Leaders speak on thing in public and do another in private. They are busy bargaining for the portfolios and positions, hardly giving attention to the burning problems of the country like devastating food and fuel prices and other difficulties.
On that background I found the Obama and Clinton speeches of this morning very impressive and inspiring.
Let me quote what Obama had to say for Clinton:
“Senator Hillary Clinton has made history in this campaign not just because she’s a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she’s a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.
“We’ve certainly had our differences over the last sixteen months. But as someone who’s shared a stage with her many times, I can tell you that what gets Hillary Clinton up in the morning - even in the face of tough odds - is exactly what sent her and Bill Clinton to sign up for their first campaign in Texas all those years ago; what sent her to work at the Children’s Defense Fund and made her fight for health care as First Lady; what led her to the United States Senate and fueled her barrier-breaking campaign for the presidency - an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult the fight may be. And you can rest assured that when we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country, she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen. Our party and our country are better off because of her, and I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.” (source)
Hillary Clinton started her speech praising Obama. She said:
“I want to start tonight by congratulating Senator Obama and his supporters on the extraordinary race that they have run. Senator Obama has inspired so many Americans to care about politics and empowered so many more to get involved, and our party and our democracy is stronger and more vibrant as a result. So, we are grateful, and it has been an honor to contest these primaries with him, just as it is an honor to call him my friend. And tonight, I would like all of us to take a moment to recognize him and his supporters for all they have accomplished.” (source)
I am certainly not a big fan of John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for the President of the United States. That is because I want Barack Obama, the charismatic icon, to win the presidency. I find McCain speeches dull and boring. They lack life. I know presidency is not about speeches only, but the speeches do show the personality of the speaker and McCain has shown through his speeches that his personality is not inspiring and encouraging and exciting. My two cents… -by DW
Filed under: American Elections
JFK once said , ”we shall never negotiate out of fear, and we shall never fear to negotiate. …”
It seems to me, political parties negociated with Maoists out of fear. As long as the politics of intimidation carried out by Maoists does not stop, there will be no difference between Republic of Zimbawe and Republic of Nepal. We as citizens have a duty to stand up to the Maoists and be ready for next struggle againts possible dictatoship by Puspa Kamal Dahal. Many coutries in Africa are republics, and Nepal is on the verge of becoming one of those failed republics. Come on People, Puspa Kamal Dahal aint no Nelson Mandela, he is about to be become Mugabe of Nepal! Be ready for Jana Aandolan 3!
To follow up my previous post..
I think it is relavant to quote Senator Barack Obama in Nepal´s context..
Freedom must mean freedom from fear, not the freedom of anarchy!
How can we expect such harmonious culture in Nepali politics when there is a political rivalry between Pol pot Prachande who believes in politics through violence and the rest of the parties that believe in competitive politics.
The youth wing of UML will now on kick prachande’s ass.
all the best to obama, but one the other hand nepal is about be ruled by a terrorist, who are also involved in govt. contracts. in pokhara, beating, or trying to kill other rival contractors.
how come those ycl had khakuris, rods all the time.
pokhara people/youths make them pay, declear pokhare terrorist, maoist, ycl, mad god free valley.
Bhim,
These are the symptons of Somalia…developing the warrior groups…where do NA and PLA will stand in this situation…
Pray USA really became nice.
I do not believe until I see they can still vote for this old white macho
Memo to Comrade Prachanda:
Congratulation! You did it. Now you have the serious job of reconstructing Nepal. Without stable political system we cannot develop the country economically. I have some suggestions for the democratization of the political system. I hope you will consider it.
According to the news reports you want to be the President or Prime minister or both of Nepal. Definitely you want to lead the next government. I understand your desire. But I want you to stay out of this for now. If you do lead new government, it will diminish your stature. You should appoint someone from your party to lead the government. To prove that you are serious in democratic value you should declare that the press will be totally free and there will be no more political prisoners in Nepal. All the student unions from educational institutes should be banned. And YCL should be disbanded and all your PLA fighters should be out of the camp. These YCL and PLA members should be allowed to enter Army, Police, or Civil Service according to their wishes and according to regular procedure. Do not try to force integration.
First of all, 240 elected members should form the new House of Representatives. The next, I am suggesting you to form the National Assembly consisting of 75 members representing 75 districts of Nepal. Whichever political party won the district should nominate the member for the National Assembly for that district. 335 nominated members by the political parties through the PR system are hard to swallow. This will drain our economy.
The 26 cabinet members should be of your choosing. If you decide to bring any of the newly elected members to the cabinets, these members must resign from the CA and must be replaced by the close contestant from the same constituency. Decision has to be made so that only one person will represent one constituency. So Deuba has to give up his seat either from Dadeldhura or Kanchanpur. You should give up both of your seats from Kathmandu and Rolpa. Your vacated seats should go to Rajendra Kumar K.C. (NC) and Shant Kumar Oli (UML).
The cabinet has to be formed before the next CA meeting. Otherwise you will be wasting most of your time on legality of present Koirala led government. You could always have some other party members in Maoist led government.
Since the dawn of democratic days in Nepal we are talking about decentralization, which never happened. Our political system always has been Kathmandu centered. To begin decentralization we should have election in each district in Nepal for Chief District Officers. Since it will not be possible to held election for that purpose right now, I suggest you to appoint CDOs for each district by taking consideration of ethnicity and geography of that particular district. This way all the Madhes region will have Madhesi CDOs and so forth.
There was a time none of your candidates won any seats in the election. Then you went to the jungle. This time around you won majority of seats. So don’t blow it up. Whatever you do in next two year period people will remember them and the people will show you in the next election.
Good Luck!
Actually, our media is always promoting the blame game of political parties ….more loudly amplified version than as it is expected too.
Ultimately, leaders of Nepal are as like as DW stated above with low level attack definitely.
We have no culture to respect otherssss.
thanks
At least even if he loses to McCain he still can try Nepal, they haven’t nominated a president yet, too. Time to learn some Nepali Barrack!! Just to play safe!
Obama was nominated by non-elected delegates of Democratic Party of USA for the candidate of the Presidency.
Agreed that our political leaders are the lowest of the lows. Dahal, Koirala, Khanal, Mahat, Bhattarai etc make my skin crawl with disgust. This country seems to be truly cursed-look across the border-even Laloo seems to have reformed himself-our so called ‘leaders’ just get worse and worse.
Dinesh is dreaming. Barack Obama’s plan could be take Hiallary as his running mate and get elected and the same goes with Hillary. Since she could not win the nomination, she wants the second post. They praise each other but you need to understand here the motive is subtle. It’s like Bill Clinton admiring women. Who would be the beneficiary from such move? People have talked as far as both Obama and Hillary’s next step is to use each other. Barack Obama can use Hillary to get elected since he doesn’t seem to be winning in November based on exit polls but if he uses Hillary they could be invincible against McCain. Once Obama becomes president he can fire his vice president any time. What’s a big deal about that? It seems unlikely right now but not impossible. I don’t believe that will happen but I have heard people talk like that.
My point is don’t just see the grass greener in other side. They dig up all the dirts and expose opponents here. All the sex scandals, drunk driving records and misdemeanors gets published and broadcasted. Hillary had exposed Obama for his drug records in the past. You probably haven’t seen negative ads Hillary ran against Barack Obama during South Carolina campaign. That back fired her in election and she started changing the tone.
Wake up!!! or be in dreamland and don’t see the bad things. That’s probably better.
The blogger harbors an illusion of being a super analyst of US elections!
Too much of CNN, I guess.
Try other “Alternative Media” as well - it won’t do no harm.
Looking at our own politics, the Maoists have proposed a leading member of the Civil Society for the post of first President of the Republic. Quite a sensible idea in my opinion. Look at the reaction of the chor leaders of NC and UML. Pathetic. I know that Barack Obama and Hilary aren’t saints but I swap one them for Girija, Prachanda or J Khanal any day. If only wishes could …
Moderation jam!
Yes, I agree that US has nicely established democratic (at least they call that themselves) culture. But it wasn’t established in a day. So extolling them and cursing our leaders isn’t going to do any good. As ‘???guy’ pointed out here, they weren’t any better than our politicians during their campaign, trying to belittle and harass the other candidate all the time. and MIND YOU THAT THEY WERE FROM THE SAME DAMN PARTY. The battle between the different parties is still to begin and I tell you, I’m not expecting any ‘praising the rivals’ there.
Having said that I’m not praising the Nepalese politicians either. They certainly haven’t learnt from the past yet. But you’ll agree that they’ve come a long way. Pulling a country entangled in the decade long war wasn’t an easy feat and they’ve largely succeeded in doing so. If the Nepalese politicians obeyed the suggestions (orders) of so called democratic nation, i.e. the US, they’d still be fighting and killing each other.
So, the conclusion, it’ll take some time before the democratic norms are instilled in the Nepalese politics. At least I’m hopeful about the future.
Barack Obama would make a good leader in a leaderless country like Nepal. But in America he is a creation. Behind that smile and those speeches, lies an empty suit.
Majority White America electing a black President! There is a good chance that might happen now. Wonder if we could ever elect a dalit to Presidency or even Prime Ministership.
Objection Mr, Wagle to your statement saying Hillary praised Barack and that you envy it.
You are definetely wrong my friend. Her praise is just a lip service. She ran the worst campaign in this race and she has accused barack obama of each and every thing possible and even when her defeat was sealed, she did not accepted it outright. she played mroe dirty then even our leaders in many case, if you don’t belive me goto the sites like huffingtonpost, supporters are so bitter, just at the video in youtube of dailykos, politico, nytimes and see the old news. Her a bitter white old lady at the committee to reslove Michigan and Florida issue.
so please before giving outlandish praise to what you clearly seem to be mistaken in, think twice.
thank you
An Open letter to Dr. Dean, DNC Chairman
Dr. Dean,
I find that Democratic Party in America is the most undemocratic party. Just look at the mess you have created in this year Primary election.
First, you have decided to choose the candidate by allocating proportional numbers of delegation to each candidate. Then you chose some magic number of 2025 (without Florida and Michigan) and later on 2118 (with Florida and Michigan) for the candidate to earn the nomination. If you were smart enough you could have just made the rule that whoever gets highest number of delegates will win the nomination. In case both candidates get equal numbers of delegates then you should have weighed towards the candidate who received more popular votes.
Second, you should have created the rule like winner take all like in the Republican Party. Life could have been easier for you.
Third, you made the calendar to go primary till June 3rd. Then you want Hillary to drop out before your own schedule. Don’t you think it is stupid argument?
Fourth, what the heck are Super delegates? In this primary Obama or Clinton will not be nominated without the help of these non-delegates delegates. If you think this is democratic, why this Primary Drama anyway? You should have asked these superficial delegates to cast the votes earlier on to choose the presidential candidate for your party that could have save money and energy to attack Republican candidate.
Fifth, Clinton received 50 percent of the vote in Florida and Obama received 33 percent and she received 55 percent of the vote in Michigan, with 44 percent of voters voting “uncommitted.” That means Clinton should be awarded 105 pledged delegates from Florida and 69 from Michigan. Obama should be awarded 67 pledged delegates from Florida and none from Michigan. But you awarded Clinton only 87 pledged delegates out of 174 pledged delegates from these two states just because they did not follow your stupid rules. It’s your job to listen to the people of Florida, Michigan, and every other state in the Union. Are you running some kind of dictatorship that it’s your road is the high road?
Sixth, you are one of those people who disliked Hillary’s candidacy. You people did not want her to run in the first place. Then you want her to drop out of race after she lost Iowa, then after Super Tuesday. You just want her to drop dead. If you have adopted winner take all, Clinton has earned 2389 delegates compared to Obama’s 1840 delegates. Yes, Obama has won more states than Clinton. But the fact is most of the states (Alaska, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Nebraska, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Wyoming, Montana, and Mississippi) won by Obama are Republican States. Those are the states Al Gore did not win in 2000 and Kerry did not win in 2004. Obama will not win those states in 2008. He will win Illinois State only. Basically, you are handing the Presidency to McCain.
Going forward, DNC should adopt new rules for the nomination for the candidate for the President of the USA:
(a) State Democratic Party will decide the date for the Primary or Caucus.
(b) Candidate will be decided at the end of the Primaries or Caucuses.
(c) Whoever wins most delegates will be the nominee of the party. If two candidates get same number of delegates, person receiving most popular votes will be the nominee.
(d) Scrap Super-delegates altogether.
In conclusion, Democratic Party needs a reform before reforming the country.
Sincerely,
Shree Shrestha
4926 Tokay Blvd, Madison, WI 53711
Mr Shree Shrestha,
You seem like one of those Die Hard Hillary Fans. Get some real fact on popular vote count then Hillary’ s Claim and do not accuse Dean being anti-Hillary. And don’t suppose that Republican will surely win those states that Obama took during the primary. And rules are there for some reason. Hillary had every advantage over Obama when it all began and she used every possible political ploy to beat him but lost to him resoundingly in basically every front. And I just don’t understand why are you writing an open letter to the DNC in a nepali blog site. Better try Dailykos or some other sites that DNC might see.
My letter was hand delivered by local congressional representative to Dr. Dean. Since this blog was discussing about the subject, I thought it is fitting for the Nepalese to know about the nomination process. By the way this letter was also printed in various US newspapers and blogs.
@Shree Shrestha,
Honestly I didn’t have the patience to read your whole letter. But being ‘hand delivered to Dean’ and being ‘published in various US newspapers and blogs’ doesn’ t mean a dang. There are millions of articles being published daily in US. So ?????? ??? ????? ??????
Admins of this blog are so incompetent. Why don’t you add the feature to support unicode?? Then we would be able to see some meaningful things instead of plain ‘???????’s.
And I ain’t interested in writing that thing again.
First of all, the people who are bickering right now in Nepal are from the opposite parties. It’s the Maoists bickering with NC and UML and the Madhesis. It cannot be compared with Hillary versus Obama because both these people were from the same party. So, of course, at the end of the day, they are going to praise one another the same way Girija praises Krishna Prasad or Sher Bahadur Deuba at the end of the day.
Also, the Clinton and Obama competition veered off the “friendship road” many times during the campaign. Hillary’s analysts were going to national TV and saying that Obama could be a Muslim. And Obama’s analysts were going to TV and saying that Hillary is just a bitter old white lady who desperately wants to be a president.
I have been here in the US during this whole campaign, so I have seen and heard things in a better perspective than what you see and hear back there in Nepal. So, let’s leave the comparison of Hillary and Obama to us, and we will leave the comparison of Prachanda and Girija to you guys over there.
Wow, it is really amazing to compare USA and Nepal..I lived and worked in Nepal and the way their marginalized people are traited is beyond my beliefs.. Being African-American myself, never seen this sort of traitment any way in the USA or even in other countries.. yes,India and yemen perhaps toward their dark skin fellows…
At least the communists are trying to normalize the situation, though this might be just lips service. Hope the new guys in Kathamandu reads between the lines that the World today is not for the Lighter skins alone.
Ya sure it is a victory of Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton for the candidature election for president from his party. It is not only the win over another competitor but it is also the win over the racism which i guess is high in the american society. So I guess and hope America will get its President from the community they refer as black. Yea we should also not forget about the true sportsmanship spirit showered by both the competitors. I guess this will teach our politicians a greater lesson and they work together without any feeling of enemity towards making Nepal a better place to live in. LONG LIVE NEPAL in peace and prosperity!!!!!!
what is problem with us is that all we see is fault in us and always ready to praise westeners.i think writer need to improve his knowledge on america he needs some homework.what we should know to reach this stage america have seen dirty politics in past.Racism is prevelent in america more than any country.in path of election also we have seen Obama in islamic attire and his wife in combat outfit.by seeing barak beging nominated as demotratic nominee we can’t come to conclusion that brak will be next president of america.american public have to decide who will be next president and it seems hard for obama to be next president.stop critising omeself.when you spit on sky it will fall back to you.
During the GOP convention that this Presidential race is very much a race about White American power. As I looked over the sea of white republicans (with a few strategically placed token blacks) that the entire Republican format is actually all about maintaining the upper white class male domination of America.
Christianity, Corporations, Energy. 5% of all the wealth in America is owned by a small group of Deep South White Males. Woman are not equal, Blacks are not equal, gays are not equal, jews are not equal Asians, South Americans, Arabs, Indians you name it…we are all a step down from the white catholic male. America is diverse. Break the domination. Spread the wealth. All men and woman are created equal. Only Obama can save America.
I stumble a clash yesterday and overlook to post it but anyway this clash video is entitled Obama v. McCain on Iraq & Afghanistan. US Presidential candidates have clashed sharply in recent days on Iraq, Afghanistan and the War on Terror. Watch both two statements, who do you think or believed is right?
http://clashorama.com/index.php?id=192