THE US MIDTERM ELECTIONS: LESSONS FOR THE NIGERIAN PEOPLE. The US midterm elections have come and gone with clear winners and losers. The American people have spoken and the sober president whose party was roundly trashed conceded like a gentleman he is when he told the, American people, I hear you. Despite the Republican Partys absolute control of the Congress - the Senate and the House of Representatives, both the victors and vanquished have expressed the hope that they can find middle points in areas of sharp ideological disagreements for the benefits of the American people. With overwhelming majority in the Congress, I have not heard the GOP Congress leaders threatening Obama with impeachment even when they know that he intends to use executive actions to go around certain issues like immigrations if the Republican controlled Congress refuses to play ball. The worst that has happened is that the House Speaker John Boehner has cautioned Obama not to act unilaterally on the immigrations reform so as not to poison the well. The learning point here is that the focus is not on the well being of the Congressman and women but on what both parties think will favour the America people. Our lawmakers can do with some lessons here. The American voters on the other hand have used their voting power to express their frustrations about many issues of which, in my opinion, immigration is the major issue. Obama had made promises and had pledged to help over 12 million undocumented immigrants to be able to work in America without the fear of being deported. The majority of these undocumented immigrants are the Latinos (Hispanics), many of whose children are American citizens. I think the long delay and the frustrations angered the Spanish American voters who had massively supported Obama and the Democratic Party in 2008 and 2012. The extraordinary number of Republican Latinos that won elections to the Congress is a huge pointer. They have used their votes to voice out their frustrations. The Nigeria people can take a cue from the Americans. With their votes, they can make the change they want or show frustrations to anybody or government over unfulfilled promises. Although the road is going to be pretty rough for Obama in his last two years, he has shown the resolve to work with or without the Congress to push his vision through. One law that the majority GOP Congress will seek repeal or significantly amend is the Obamacare which Obama himself has vowed not to sign anything that will deprive the tens of millions of Americans from benefitting from the healthcare law. He has not said that he would tame the Congress with bags of Ghana (Latino) must go. He knows what it means to have executive powers and he has made it clear that he will first seek to work the winners but would not hesitate to use the executive powers he has under the American Constitution. Lastly, I am yet to read about losers heading to the courts, the last hope of the common man, (read politician). Those who lost have conceded defeats and are busy analyzing the reasons for their performances with eye on the 2016 elections already. We could do without fighting or unduly enriching some judges because we must contest every loss in the law court. We should all not be leaders. There is also honour in being led. At least the led has the power to choose who leads him. We have roughly 100 days to use that power.
Posted on: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 01:41:53 +0000
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