Late in the afternoon Nigerian time yesterday [which was earlier in the day in the United States], confirmation finally came that candidate of the Democratic Party, former Vice President Joseph Biden, had won last Tuesday’s election and will become the 46th President of the United States from January 20, next year. Counting of votes in this year’s American election was unusually protracted, mostly because 102 million voters cast their votes by mail before election day, November 3. Many states enabled this method in order to avoid a crush due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and in some states these mailed in votes were counted last.
Due to the unique [and queer] nature of the American election system, the election’s outcome hinged for several days on only about seven states. After President Donald Trump won Florida and Mr. Biden captured Wisconsin and Michigan, everything came to hinge for three days on only four states, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. It was a see-saw battle that saw Biden gradually catching up with and then overtaking Trump when mailed in ballots were counted from overwhelmingly Democratic areas. Victory was finally secured when American television networks called Pennsylvania for Biden. With its 20 electoral college votes, he finally secured 273, just above the 270 needed to win.
President-elect Biden is a calm, mild-mannered, liberal and compassionate man who worked very successfully for eight years as Barak Obama’s vice president. Americans accepted him as the man who will heal racial tensions in their country, who will tackle the COVID-19 pandemic by working closely with the medical and scientific community, who will show care and compassion to disadvantaged social groups, who will depart from Trump’s cantankerous style of rule, who will repair America’s damaged relationships with its allies, and who will work through consensus-building in the international community on thorny issues such as Iran and Middle East.
Much more than Biden’s victory, however, the big sigh of relief felt in most parts of the world yesterday was because of the impending departure of President Trump. Probably never before had America produced such a rancorous, insensitive, disruptive and highly divisive president as Trump. His four years as president have alienated most parts of the world, including the US’ long-standing allied nations.
Trump’s America First policy, under which he wrecked trade agreements, threatened to build a wall against his neighbour Mexico, separated children of illegal immigrants from their parents, orchestrated the “Muslim ban” of citizens of several Muslim majority countries from entering the US, fought a bitter battle with the news media, pulled his country out of the climate change treaty and World Health organization [WHO], withdrew from the Iran nuclear pact against the advice of Europeans, launched an unnecessary trade war against China and promoted a totally one-sided Middle East “peace plan” together caused international disruption like nothing else in recent times. His messy and embarrassing conduct when it became apparent that he was going to lose the election capped it all.
For us in Africa, Donald Trump simply had no time for us. In four years he did not visit any African country and he almost never mentioned Africa in his daily tweets, except on one unforgettably derogatory occasion. He treated black Americans with the same scorn, including during the Black Lives Matter street protests. It was sweet revenge that votes from predominantly black districts of Philadelphia and Atlanta contributed greatly to unmake Donald Trump and hand victory to Joe Biden. Most of Africa must therefore be elated to see the back of Donald Trump. We look forward to a more orderly, more compassionate and considerate treatment from incoming President Biden. We expect him to place Africa higher up on his country’s list of concerns.
There is one legacy of Donald Trump that we however hope that President Biden will uphold. That is, aversion to wars by proxy. America’s misguided ideological wars since 1945 have spilled blood in most parts of the world. This sorry record abated somewhat under Trump who was averse to proxy war, about the only good thing we will remember him for. We very much expect President Joseph Biden, on top of his other very good qualities, to uphold the Trumpian aversion to proxy war in years to come.
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