ON THE US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2008





Is the USA ready to take its morning coffee Obama black, or does it still need the WASP whitener of a Joe Biden? Did McCain have to select a female - Sarah Palin - as a running mate simply because Hilary Clinton had dropped out the presidential race?


US presidential elections, it seems, continue to be as much about ethnic and gender balance as about strategy and tactics. These races are designed to be both exhaustive and exhausting, stretching over twelve gruelling months, from the first primaries in January to the swearing-in of the president-designate the following January. They are no less than a marathon. Compared to them, our presidential election was a 100-yard sprint.


Both the American presidential election and our own would qualify more though for the Paralympics, for never before have so many competing candidates suffered from such a range of disabilities.


In the US, Democrat hopeful Barack Hussein Obama reminds every audience of his origins – Kenyan father, White mother, and a Muslim middle name. His running mate Joe Biden was faulted twice for plagiarism, being caught once while at college where he borrowed heavily from a law review article, and again in 1987 when he pilfered all-too recognisable phrases from a speech by British Labour leader and orator par excellence Neil Kinnock.


Republican contender John McCain suffers from a birth defect. According to his detractors, he was born on a US base in the Panama Canal Zone and that makes him ineligible because he is not a 'natural-born citizen'. McCain, a septuagenarian already, if elected, will become the second oldest US president after Ronald Reagan, who preferred never to be reminded of his age.


McCain's VP-designate Sarah Palin is an all-American hockey Mom, who has a husband with Yup'ik Eskimo ancestry, and a 17 year-old unmarried daughter expecting a child out of wedlock.


Here in Pakistan, the three candidates in the recent race for the presidency were similarly disadvantaged. Mr Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP came with the baggage of a sullied reputation. Justice ® Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui fielded by the PML (N) had been part of the unseemly intra-Supreme Court squabble with Chief Justice Sajjad Ali Shah in 1997. Mushahid Hussain Syed nominated by the PML (Q) found it impossible to erase incriminating TV footage showing him, Nero-like, watching while the Supreme Court still in session was being stormed by a mob.


The results of our election are already in. Mr Asif Ali Zardari has been sworn in as our 13th president, to hold office until resignation, removal or the year 2013, whichever occurs earlier. The US public meanwhile must wait another two months to know who will be its 44th President.


Should we care at all whether it is McCain or Obama, any more than we did during the Putin/Medeyev cross-over in Russia?


[Refused by DAWN. Unpublished] Certainly, because even though the US elections take place over 16,000 miles away, the defensible borders of America now touch the Durand Line in Afghanistan. Pakistan's reliance on the US continues to be clear and consistent, if unstated. The PPP manifesto issued in 2008 for example makes no mention of the US or of foreign policy. Perhaps it did not feel the need to state the obvious. We are the still the apple of America's eye, the rotten apple. Read what the US presidential hopefuls say enough about Pakistan. McCain's policy of a 'long-term commitment to the country' aimed at enhancing 'Pakistan's ability to act against insurgent safe havens' would in effect be a continuation his fellow Republican George W. Bush's policies. The evil that Bush has wrought will live after him, in McSame. Obama and his running mate Joe Biden both are over-familiar with Pakistan. Unlike George W. Bush before his inauguration in 2000, they do not need prompting to locate Pakistan on the map. They are both personally acquainted with it. A homeless Obama was once given shelter by a Pakistani friend in New York; Biden came to Pakistan to witness our elections on 18th February. For advice on foreign affairs, Obama's camp draws upon 300 specialists in US think-tanks and from Bill Clinton's former staff. Because of them, perhaps, he is convinced that Iraq is not the problem: Afghanistan and Pakistan's FATA are. He believes that US aid is enriching the Pakistan army, not the Pakistani public. Obama complains (as do many Pakistanis who reach upwards to grasp the poverty line) that not enough US aid has gone to building schools or to create an infrastructure that will 'help develop and give opportunity to the Pakistani people.' His opinion is based in part upon the testimony given to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in January this year, where it was disclosed that out of the $10 bn. remitted to Islamabad since 2001, almost $6 bn. was applied towards Coalition Support, another $1.8 bn. towards security assistance, $1.62 bn. to buttress Pakistan's economy, and only 9% ($0.9 bn.) for development and humanitarian assistance. 'Since counterterrorism operations will continue to be important to American security for the foreseeable future,' one critic of unbridled US aid to Pakistan has commented, '…reforming the disbursal system - by amending the authorizing legislation if necessary - is critical. The current system of simply cutting checks for whatever bills are presented monthly by Islamabad as the costs borne for counterterrorism support engenders institutional corruption in the Pakistani military, destroys the integrity of the U.S. assistance program, and is unfair to the U.S. taxpayer.' Perhaps this might explain to the Pakistan public why our top brass was invited to meet US Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and his team on board the US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Indian Ocean on 26th August, and why President Zardari has felt the need to attend the closing ceremonies of the Paralympic Games in Beijing, instead of waiting for the closing of the polls in the US.