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Tag: Donald J. Trump

  • Trump and Africa: The next four years

    Trump and Africa: The next four years

    By Alade Fawole

    With the certification by Congress of his electoral victory, it is certain that Donald J. Trump will assume the presidency of the US for a second, non-consecutive tenure on January 20. Many are already gazing into the crystal ball to see what the second tenure of this mercurial personality and unusual politician holds for the world. I claim neither the power of clairvoyance nor a crystal ball to see into the future and decipher what his tenure promises. This is merely an exercise in intelligent speculation, postulation or prediction, a routine pastime of scholars. The implication of course is that as predictions go, they do not have to be right, but it would be a delight even if just a handful of my predictions are proven to be correct at the end of his four-year tenure.

    A few observations are however pertinent at the outset.

     The first one is that the global world has changed dramatically and irreversibly since Trump left the White House in January 2021. Tremendous geopolitical shifts have occurred and in such a manner that challenges America’s global dominance in Europe, Asia, and even here in Africa. The Russia-Ukraine war has severely tested Western unity, resolve and military capability; the massive Western economic and other sanctions imposed on Russia have backfired so spectacularly that it is the European economies rather than Russia’s that have been hardest hit, while the war has rejuvenated Russia’s military power through rapid industrial production. In the process, Ukraine has become a pathetic shell of its once vibrant self, and the geopolitical map of Europe has altered significantly in Russia’s favour, at least for now. This is the reality the new Trump administration would have to reckon with. Situation in the Middle East is fluid, unpredictable, with the influence of other outside powers such as Russia, Russia and Turkey, provoking tectonic shifts at such an alarming speed; both the US and Israel are derided globally because of their deliberate subversion of and trampling upon international law and civilized norms, and the US even much more derided because of its hypocrisy.

    In Asia, geopolitical rivalries with China increasingly favour the latter, whilst North Korea remains the principal enfant terrible in the Korean Peninsula. Though Latin America remains Washington’s unchallenged sphere of influence, but stirrings of dissent remain in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and increasingly even in Argentina.

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     Africa, where more and more states are discovering the courage to assert their sovereignty, by opposing the basing of foreign military forces on their soil, is my focus here.

     Nobody in my view should be starry-eyed about US-Africa relations under Trump. Simple reason: all US presidents are the same, no matter the person or their political party, and America’s national interests drive their foreign policies. Even Barack Obama, though strongly related to Africa by blood from his Kenyan father, was no different while in the White House, and Africans must still hold him responsible for his deliberate and wilful destabilization of Libya, the callous murder of Muammar Gaddafi, and the eventual descent of that country into violence and balkanization under three separate warlords. Libya is a basket case today, its destruction and arms looted form its armouries are fuelling jihadist terrorism and insurgencies across the Sahara-Sahel region, all courtesy of Barack Obama!

     I do not expect any goodies for Africa under the Trump presidency, except may be some tokenistic concessions to a few of the “shitholes” therein for purely transactional reasons. The core objective of Trump’s presidency is to make America great again by whatever means necessary, the implication being that he would not hesitate to trample upon the rights and interests of other countries and peoples. He has recently at a news conference in his Mar-a-Largo redoubt openly threatened to repossess the Panama Canal from Panama, and take over Greenland, an autonomous territory of Denmark, a fellow NATO member state, by force if necessary. He considers these moves required for America’s national security, caring little about the sovereign rights of those concerned.

    As it is, Africa is endowed with vital mineral resources that America badly covets, and would stop at nothing to secure access to them, include staving off other competing powers. That, without prejudice to whoever occupies the White House at any point in time, has been America’s fundamental interest in and the sole preoccupation of its Africa policy since the early 1960s. Not minding who the president is, the US foreign policy and national security establishment is an immensely powerful, permanent bureaucracy, complemented by sundry think tanks, consultants, academics, policy research institutes, members of Congress, lobbyists, special interest groups (such as big pharmaceutical firms, major armament manufacturers, oil multinationals), euphemistically called the “Deep State” that firmly ensures that no White House occupant strays from America’s fundamental objectives of resource appropriation (by force if need be) and the pursuit of global hegemony and empire-building.

    America’s principal interest in Africa is to control access to the vast hydrocarbon resources of the Gulf of Guinea and other strategic natural resources available across the continent. Not this alone, the continent is also a vast arena of geopolitical competition with other great powers like China, Russia, India, so it isn’t African interests that is Washington’s concern but securing its hegemonic foothold in the competition. Let’s not forget that it was Donald Trump who, during his first presidency, donated the sovereign state of Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (formerly Western Sahara), and full member state of the African Union, to Morocco! Morocco, a fellow African Union member state, has held on illegally to portions of that resource-endowed country. Again, outgoing President Biden had vowed to counter China in Africa and curtail what its terms ‘malign Russian activities’ as well, evidence that Trump, the man who loves to portray and project power, would do no less.

    Will Africa be immunized from Trump’s threat to punish the BRICS+ nations by imposing 100 percent tariffs on them if they ever attempt de-dollarizing their international trade and seeking alternative payment platforms against the US-controlled SWIFT? The answer should definitely be a resounding No! African countries are particularly vulnerable to economic sanctions because they are largely producers of primary commodities whose prices they do not control; dependent on the West mostly for their imports, and critically beholden to Western-controlled international financial institutions and multinational banks that had cleverly sucked them into a vicious international debt peonage.

    His second and final term will end, hopefully, four years from now in 2029. That’s when we can do a thorough post mortem examination to find out if my scepticisms and misgivings are right or wrong. That means I have four years of respite before I can be justly castigated for my views and predictions. But as I made clear above, I’m not afraid to be wrong. If anything, I would love to be proved wrong: that Trump might actually turn a new leaf and behave more like a global statesman rather than the divisive, uncaring transactional bully he is known to be. He can still make America great not necessarily by ruthlessness and insensitivity but by striving to make the world safe for all, and for America to thrive in it.

    •Prof Fawole writes from Ikire, Osun State.

  • Donald J. Trump and the decline of the United States

    I have been a close observer of American politics since my secondary school days when General Dwight David Eisenhower (1953-1961) was president succeeding the immediate post Second World War President  Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) who himself towards the end of the war took over from Franklin Delano Roosevelt ( 1933-1945), the longest serving president of the USA. I was in the University of Ibadan when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1961-1963) was assassinated on November 22 1963. The assassination of President Kennedy nearly destroyed the image and reputation of the United States in the world. For us in Nigeria it was a tragedy. Kennedy had so much interest in Africa and the developing world that he invited Nigeria’s prime minister, Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa not only to pay a state visit, but also to address the joint sitting of the USA Congress, perhaps the only African that has ever been granted that honour up till today. I still remember how our President, Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe made a broadcast to the nation ordering our national flag to be flown at half-mast for three days in memory of a great man and a global citizen. Many of us in the University of Ibadan wept openly for a man who was regarded as an icon by young people. The way he spoke, the words that came out of his mouth, his mid-Atlantic accent and diction, his lanky stature, his haircut and his beautiful wife and young children were objects of admiration by all of us. I personally made a painful visit to the spot where he was shot when I visited Dallas sometimes ago. When the tears had dried up and the then Vice President Lyndon Blaines Johnson (1963-1969) took over the American presidency, most of my contemporaries lost interest in the USA. Ironically President Johnson did many revolutionary things like getting the Civil Act of 1965 through the Congress and passing a few other socially relevant acts of what he dubbed the beginning of a “great society” into law thus bringing millions of black Americans into the mainstream of American political life through having the right to vote and be voted for. These were rights that were latent and had been inactive because of deliberate acts by the white deep state to deny the right to black people by violence and subterfuge. The bitterness the murder of Kennedy introduced into American politics and the whole conspiracy surrounding the assassination in Dallas Texas, the home state of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, made it difficult for many to view President Johnson’s achievement dispassionately. The war in Vietnam also complicated matters to the extent that many within the Democratic Party of the president rose against him and the younger brother of President John Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Senator Eugene McCarthy challenged Lyndon Johnson in the Democratic primaries for the party’s nomination which was an unusual scenario that forced a sitting president to refuse to contest for a second term in office. The challenge was to end in tragedy for the Kennedy family when Robert Kennedy was gunned down on June 5, 1968 by a Palestinian refugee Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles while Kennedy was celebrating his victory in the Californian primary. The disarray in the Democratic Party paved the way for the coming into power of a shady and calculating character like Richard Milhous Nixon who ended in disgrace when he resigned in 1974 for his anti-democratic and illegal shenanigans of bugging the office of the rival party in the Watergate office complex in Washington DC and for refusing to release his secret taping of discussions in the White House including his attempt to cover up the burglary of the Democratic Party’s office. Since this low point in the history of the American presidency, there have been people like Jimmy Carter, William Clinton and Barack Obama on the Democratic side and  Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush, his son George W. Bush from the Republican Party. Some of them distinguished themselves in office and some out of office but all maintained their positions as models and examples for the American people to follow. Some of them were closet racists like Nixon and Reagan and at least presented a facade of upholding the American myth of equality of equality of all races.

    Now we have an unusual and incredible president like the current occupant of the White House, President Donald J. Trump. Trump virtually exploited the anger of the white American working class and rural folks who felt left behind by the globalized economy of the world which transferred manufacturing to China and countries in Asia while many manufacturing jobs in America were lost thus creating boarding of factories in the so-called rust belt of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Illinois and to some extent Wisconsin. Trump bullied his way into the presidency calling his Republican and Democratic contenders unflattering nicknames and being totally uncivil and rude while his opponents who did not want to get into the gutter with him not knowing what to do bore his insults with equanimity. In the bitterly contested election of 2016 against Hillary Clinton, Trump got more electoral college votes than Clinton who beat him by close to three million plurality votes. Trump was able to paint Hillary as a corrupt person who exploited her position for financial gain in what he called “pay for play”. He was also able to tar Clinton with the brush of the so-called liberals who want to flood the country with immigrants from Mexico and other countries from Latin America and Africa. In other words, he told white Americans that they were being marginalized and were doomed to become a minority in their country if they did not vote for him. This racist language worked and fired up about 40percent of Americans who no matter what Trump did were ready to support him. Trump himself boasted that if he shot a person in the heart of New York City his supporters will continue to support him. When he got elected people thought the awesome weight of the office will sober him up and he will be the president of all Americans and the so called leader of the “free world”. In office President Trump has not only contributed to the bitter division of his country and mostly along racial lines with White supremacists on his side and those white and black opposed to them that call themselves anti-fascists or “ANTIFA” for short, President Trump sees both as evil in his warped morality. Not only is he dividing the USA, he is also angering the western allies of the USA and undermining the western institutions that had secured world peace since 1945. Nothing is sacrosanct, not NATO, IMF, World Bank, the UN and its specialized agencies. The president says he is not interested in multi-lateral institutions and that he would rather deal on bi-lateral basis with countries that America would want to relate to. His credo is “Make America Great Again “which is a policy in which America’s interest is paramount. But America is not an island sufficient unto itself because if the USA is in good shape and the rest of the world goes to the dogs, the USA would not benefit from such a self-defeating selfish policy.

    It is strange that in his politics, he seems to love autocrats like Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Rodrigo   Duterte of Philippines and nationalists and populists in Britain, Hungary, Poland and recently Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil while he regularly insulted Justin Trudeau of Canada, Immanuel Macron of France, Theresa May, former prime minister of Great Britain and Angela Merkel, the chancellor of Germany. His regular tantrums and unorthodox way of doing things and his going against all norms of diplomatic behaviour have now come to be accepted as the new American normal.

    Recently on the eve of the G7 meeting in Biarritz France and during and after the post conference press conference, the president said so many things that made people feel he is not fit for the post he is holding. Before leaving for the G7 he peremptorily cancelled a state visit to Denmark because the prime minister of the country, Mette Frederiksen said it was absurd that Trump would offer to buy an island constituting 98 percent of her country. In return Trump called her a “nasty woman”.  At another time he accused Jews in a rather patronizing racist view, that American Jews who vote Democratic in USA elections are either ignorant or disloyal. This is rather a strange thing to say in a country where support for Israel is bi- partisan. He then added the same week that he was the “chosen one “to solve American problems especially his tariff war with China which seems to be about to plunge the whole world into recession. Then he says someone from the highest level of the Chinese government phoned the USA to plead for negotiations on the tariffs war only for the phone call to be denied. While at the G7, he left America’s chair vacant while leaders from the rest of the world deliberated on global climate change obviously because he does not believe in the evidence of climate change. This was explained away by his staff who said he was having meetings with India and Egypt which was a lie because the presidents of those two countries attended the meeting on the invitation of the G7.

    Then it was alleged that he considered nuking the eye of any hurricane approaching the USA. It was allegedly explained to him that he will turn a hurricane into radioactive holocaust if he nuked them! Then he claimed his wife Melania had met Kim Jon Un; this was quickly explained away by saying he meant to say he had spoken so much about the North Korean dictator that his wife seem to know him.  He also offered his money-losing golf club and resorts in Miami Florida as venue for the G7 meeting next year which will go against the Emolument clause in the American constitution preventing a president from benefiting financially by holding the post of president. He has so much embarrassed many people in the USA that two people within the Republican Party including Joe Walsh one of the right wing radio journalists that facilitated his election in 2016 to decide to challenge him in the Republican primaries. It is of course unlikely yet that the Republican Party will abandon him next year. The onus is on the Democratic Party to present an alternative to Donald Trump out of the huge company of 21 candidates running for president. Some of them are simply too extreme in their policies that Americans will not pay attention to them except for entertainment. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, two of the three leading contenders are just too old in their late seventies that not many Americans will waste their votes on them. Elizabeth Warren, the articulate and sincere senator from Massachusetts is in her 70s also. Kamilla Harris who is 54 is not likely to be successful in election shortly after another African American. The same goes for Senator Cory Booker another African American and Julian Castro a Cuban-American. Pete Buttigieg, a mayor of a small city looks impressive but he is gay and I doubt if America is ready for gay president. Beto O’Rourke from El Passo, Texas ought to gain more traction than he is gaining right now. Perhaps at the nick of time a shining redeemer would seize the leadership of the Democratic Party to save America and the world from the re-election of Donald J Trump. In other words, the election is for the Democratic Party to lose and not Trump to win.

  • The Trump-Kim rapprochement

    June 12, will remain symbolic in the annals of world history! It was the day leaders of two adversarial nuclear-armed states, US president Donald J. Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jung-Un, sat down for a bilateral summit in Singapore to discuss peace in the Korean peninsula. Up until early this year, the relationship of the two leaders had been markedly acrimonious, with frequent exchange of vitriolic verbal attacks and open threats of mutual nuclear annihilation. Trump had threatened at the UN General Assembly last year to wipe out North Korea with nuclear weapons. Mercifully for us all, both leaders have now pulled back from the brink of a nuclear showdown which until a few months ago was a distinct possibility.

    In its aftermath of that historic summit, Donald Trump has declared that North Korea is no longer a nuclear threat to the United States. What a relief! To be quite frank, North Korea had not at any time posed a nuclear threat to the US. If anything, it was the US that has all along been the greatest nuclear and military threat to the rest of the world, and most recently to North Korea! North Korea’s nuclear ambition is to satisfy its need for national security and protection, not to attack America or trigger a nuclear holocaust, as the usual hawks in Washington would like us to believe. It was the US president that openly threatened a nuclear Armageddon! But then, it  is understandable, for America has never been averse to initiating pretexts for fighting foreign wars.

    All perceptive students of US foreign policy know that the most important preoccupation of US foreign engagements since the end of the Second World War is its sickening national obsession for initiating and fighting wars abroad. They do this, according late Ali Mazrui, on the pretext that Americans would be safer at home by fighting wars abroad. Since the US emerged on the world stage as one of the two military superpowers at the end of the Second World War in 1945, fighting wars abroad has been a major preoccupation of all US administrations without exception. Every president since then has had to look for excuses to make war, more so since American politics, its national security and foreign policy have been hijacked by and put under the vise grip of what President Eisenhower famously termed the ‘military-industrial complex’, that unholy alliance of the military hierarchs and the big arms manufacturers working to control the government. Goaded on behind the scenes by this evil behemoth, i.e., the alliance of the huge military establishment having millions of men strategically deployed on hundreds of bases across the globe and the multi-trillion dollar arms manufacturing combines, every US president has had to look for one pretext or the other to fight a foreign war on which billions of dollars worth of munitions would be expended to make the arms manufacturers smile to their banks. After President Eisenhower who gave that ominous warning that Americans must prevent this pernicious combined evil from totally hijacking the government of the people from the people,  John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson started and escalated their Vietnam war, a savage war that that Richard Nixon and Gerard Ford inherited and pursued with much greater brutality and massive destruction; Jimmy Carter had a disastrous attempt to use military force to rescue kidnapped American diplomats held hostage in Iran; Ronald Reagan invaded Grenada and bombed Libya in a failed attempt to kill Muammar Gaddafi; George H. W. Bush invaded Panama, and later Iraq ostensibly to liberate Kuwait from its grips; Bill Clinton bombed Sudan ostensibly to punish Osama Bin Laden and avenge Al Qaeda’s bombing of US embassies in East Africa; and George W. Bush (the junior) sexed up intelligence to create the most egregious pretext for bombing Afghanistan, and later for invading and destroying Iraq on the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction targeted at the US. Even Barack Obama, who was gifted the Nobel Peace Prize at the start of his administration, ended up a great war-monger just like the rest of them. In Africa, he spearheaded and coordinated NATO’s bombing and destruction of Libya to satiate America’s predilection for regime change. Libya is today in ruins and a failed state courtesy of Barack Obama. Most of Middle East and Afghanistan is a smoldering inferno today, as it has been for decades now, all thanks to the war-mongering leaders of the United States of America.

    It was clear to those familiar with US foreign policy that months before this historic summit, Donald Trump had been ramping up excuses for a major foreign war: it was either going to be with North Korea or Iran. This summit appears to have pulled both North Korea and US back, at least for the meantime, from the edge of what could be a nuclear Armageddon since both are well armed with dangerous nuclear weapons and long-range missile delivery systems. Even if America possesses many more nuclear missiles than NK, as it actually does, the reality is that a nuclear weapon is a weapon of mass destruction whose use only a totally depraved or satanic mind would authorize. For me, I have never thought of Donald Trump as totally sane person anyway. And I am not alone in that regard. In October last year, a group of 27 American psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health professionals in a series of articles published into a book titled  “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump” actually questioned his metal fitness. In the book, which became an instant best seller, they contend that his “pathological narcissism and sociopathy” could lead America into a war. To be candid, I wholeheartedly subscribe to Professor Biodun Jeyifo’s characterization of Trump as an “innately evil” person who is “completely devoid of normal human decency and moral and psychological self-restraint” (The Nation, Sunday April 22, p. 21). Only a satanic person is capable of threatening to rain down “fire and fury” and total destruction of North Korea with weapons of mass destruction that would incinerate millions of non-combatants at the flick of a nuclear button; only a thoroughly depraved mind would boast that his nuclear button is bigger than his adversary’s!

    The grounds for a foreign war had been carefully prepared and he had purposefully assembled a team of war-mongering technocrats to egg him on – the hawkish John Bolton as National Security Adviser, Mike Pompeo, formerly CIA Director as new Secretary of State, Nikki Haley as the UN ambassador who often seems more hawkish than Trump himself, and of course, the ever ubiquitous military-industrial complex waiting in the wings. And with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu pulling the strings and beating the war drums, Trump was being goaded into a war in the Middle East, a war against Iran. And this seemed a distinct possibility as he was failing to make significant political success at home and abroad, and his fragile ego might lead him to seek for compensation elsewhere.

    Mercifully for humanity, this unstable Donald Trump may never have the opportunity to use his bigger nuclear buttons against North Korea or any other country for that matter. How he navigates the labyrinthine politics of his hawkish apparatchiks, military hierarchs and war-baiting military-industrial complex is what the rest of the world must watch carefully.

     

    • Prof Fawole writes from Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife.

  • Tillerson bids farewell to U.S. State Dept

    Outgoing U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, bid farewell to officials of State Department on Friday and urged them not to lose sight of their personal integrity.

    Tillerson, whose sack was announced on March 13 by President Donald Trump, few hours after ending a five-nation tour of Africa, would step down and handover to his successor, Mike Pompeo on March 31.

    He said “I truly appreciate the opportunity to bid you a proper farewell. First, I must thank each and every one of you for the role you played in enabling the State Department to lead our foreign policy efforts and conduct steady diplomacy.”

    Taking a swipe at Washington, Tillerson said “this can be a very mean-spirited town. But you don’t have to choose to participate in that.

    “Each of us get to choose the person we want to be and the way we want to be treated and the way we will treat others.”

    He said the U.S. faced many challenges in some instances, perplexing foreign affairs relationships and in other instances serious national security threats.

    “In these times, your continued diligence and devotion to State Department’s mission has never been more necessary.

    “As you go about your duties, each of you carrying out your individual responsibilities and
    collective duties, it is my hope that you will be guided by and test your actions each day against the values that we have spoken about over this past year.

    “First, to value the safety and security of yourselves, your loved ones, and your colleagues; second, to maintain commitment to accountability by first holding yourselves accountable.

    “This is so that you’re able to hold others accountable, and that the positive environment of accountability is underpinned by honesty and integrity in all that you do.

    “Never lose sight of your most valuable asset, the most valuable asset you possess: your personal integrity. You were born with it.

    “It belongs to you, and always has and will belong to you and you alone. Only you can relinquish it or allow it to be compromised.

    “Once you’ve done so, it is very, very hard to regain it. So guard it as the most precious thing you possess.”

    Deputy Secretary John Sullivan, earlier at an event on U.S. humanitarian assistance, stressed that Tillerson would “remain as Secretary of State through the end of the month, but he’s departing the building today.”

    He said Tillerson’s work for the U.S., leading the department, his voice for peace, and for humanitarian assistance had been an inspiration.

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  • Trump on if he’ll concede if he loses: “We’ll see what happens”

    Trump on if he’ll concede if he loses: “We’ll see what happens”

    Republican U.S. Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump on whether he will concede the election if he loses when asked by reporters, responded, saying, “We’ll see what happens.

    The comments were made after he cast his ballot at a polling location in New York.

    He was accompanied by his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka.

    Trump was echoing remarks made in the third presidential debate, when the moderator asked if he would honour the election results.

    Trump replied that he would “keep you in suspense.”

    Another reporter asked Tuesday which candidate he voted for.

    Trump responded by saying that it had been a “tough decision.”

  • U.S. election: Campaigns, normal activities ongoing with no security deployment

    U.S. election: Campaigns, normal activities ongoing with no security deployment

    U.S. witnessed normal government and commercial activities on Tuesday in the ongoing historic election with no security personnel deployed to polling stations.

    A correspondent of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in the U.S. reports that government offices, commercial banks, schools and other activities remained open with no restriction of movements.

    Working class individuals were also seen coming early to the polls to cast their votes before going to their offices.

    Elections officials told NAN that security personnel are not deployed to polling stations as violence are not usually anticipated.

    They, however, said that security personnel could be called should there be any hitch to the poll at any of the centres.

    NAN also reports that campaigns were ongoing at the polling centres with supporters of candidates publicly soliciting for votes.

    NAN, however, reports that guns could be carried into some polling centres like churches and other public places except schools, according to officials.

    The laws of some states in the U.S. permit carrying of guns except in mostly northeastern states.

    A commissioner at the Department of Elections, State of Virginia, Mr Edgardo Cortes, said that law enforcement officials are prohibited from being deployed to polling centres.

    “Law enforcement agents are not deployed to polling centres. They are not deployed to protect ballots; it is prohibited.

    “Law enforcement agents are only on calls to respond if there are disturbances, but we ask them not to set up speed stops or checks that could deter people from accessing voting places.

    “Holidays are also not declared,” he told NAN.

    He also said that campaigns are allowed at the polling centres within certain perimeters.

    “Campaigns are allowed outside 40 feet of the polling centres. There is no law banning campaigns on election day.

    “There is going to be campaigns going on as the voting is going on,” he said.

    At all the polling stations visited by NAN, no security official was sighted.

    Ms Joyce Gunderlach, Chief Election at Kiln Greek precinct in Newport News, said that the centre did not require any law enforcement official as no incidences of violence had been recorded there in history.

    Similarly, Mrs Linda O’Dell, Election, Chief Election Officer at Old Courthouse Way Community Centre, said she could call the police if their services are required but expressed confidence that such would not be necessary.

    Results from the elections are expected to be declared tonight while the president-elect would also be announced by major media networks later on Tuesday. (NAN)

  • Trump flops, Clinton scores high after first debate

    Trump flops, Clinton scores high after first debate

    As pundits predicted, the Republican Party candidate for the November 8 presidential election of the United States (U.S.), Mr. Donald J. Trump, last night, bungled the chance to refine his conduct and uncouth rhetoric at the first debate with his main challenger – Senator Hillary Clinton – held at Hofstra University in New York.
    For the whole of the 90 minutes, Clinton put the Grand Old Party (GOP) candidate on the defense, making Trump to speak less on his porgramme, but more on uncharitable comments he had previously made against African-American, Hispanics, Muslims, President Barack Obama’s citizenship and his approval of Russian hackers’ breaking into American computer network.
    Trump started the debate with the calm disposition. Some 30 minutes later, the Republican candidate became temperamental, interrupting his rival and Lester Holt, the debate’s anchor. Clad in a black suit, white shirt and blue tie, Trump drank periodically from a glass cup of water placed in his front, while his tie abnormally rested on the lapel as he charged his Clinton.
    Trump’s disagreement with Clinton at the debate, watched by over 100 million Americans, stemmed from jobs, taxes, nuclear threat, gun control, and racial expletives. For him, it was the time to debunk spiteful comments he made in the past and set the record straight. But, Clinton had ample opportunity to further woo undecided voters as she explained how she would lead the country if elected.
    Trump said America has become a third-world country because of the economy mismanagement. He took an open swipe at Clinton’s husband, saying former President Bill Clinton signed North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which he described as “one of the worst things that ever happened in the manufacturing industry”.
    Clinton did not betray any emotion when Trump criticised her husband. “That is your opinion,” she calmly replied Trump.
    Trump’s unpaid tax became prominent as the debate progressed. Clinton insinuated that the GOP candidate may not have paid any federal tax since he started as his business, nothing that Trump only turned in tax to state authorities when he wanted to get the license for his casino business.
    “That makes me smart,” Trump said, adding: “I will release my tax returns against my lawyer’s wishes when she (Clinton) releases her 33,000 e-mails that have been deleted. As soon as she releases them, I will release my tax returns.”
    Clinton admitted fault in her e-mail scandal.  “If I had to do it over again, I would obviously do it differently. But I’m not going to make any excuses. It was a mistake and I take responsibility for that,” she said.
    But, Trump dismissed Clinton’s admission of the mistake as disgraceful, saying: “That was more than a mistake. That was done purposely….I think it’s disgraceful. And believe me, this country thinks it is this…really thinks it is disgraceful also.”
    On bringing back manufacturers and job creation, Clinton said: “Let’s remember where we were eight years ago; we had the worst financial crisis – the great recession, the worst since the 1930s. That was, in large part, because of tax policies that slash taxes on the wealthy, failed to invest in the middle class, took their eyes off of Wall Street and created a perfect storm…
    “Nine million people lost their jobs. Five million people lost their homes. And 1$3 Trillion in family wealth was wiped out. Now, we have come back from that abyss. And it has not been easy. So we are now on the precipice of having a potentially much better economy. But the last thing we need to do is to go back to the policies that failed us in the first place. Independent experts have looked at what I have proposed and looked at what Donald (Trump) has proposed.
    “They have looked at my plans, and they have said okay if we can do this, and I intend to get it done, we will have 10 million more new jobs. It is because we will be making investments where we can grow the economy.”
    Trump disagreed, saying: “The first thing is…don’t let the jobs leave. The companies are leaving. I could name thousands of them; they are leaving and they are leaving in bigger numbers than ever…”
    In his usual rhetoric, Trump said: “Excuse me, I will bring back jobs. You (Clinton) can’t bring back jobs.”
    The GOP candidate insinuated that President Obama and Clinton created ISIS because of the manner America pulled out of Iraq. Trump said Obama should have left about 10,000 soldiers and taken over the Iraqi oil, noting that access to the oil field by Islamist militants led to the creation of ISIS.
    Clinton responded: “Our military is assisting in Iraq, and we are hoping that within the year, we will be able to push ISIS out of Iraq. And then, you know, really squeeze them in Syria. But we have to be cognizant of the fact that they’ve had foreign fighters coming to volunteer for them, foreign money, foreign weapons. So we have to make this the top priority, and I would also do everything possible to take out their leadership.”
    The Democratic candidate reiterated that she would employ diplomacy to deal with nuclear proliferation, describing Trump as a war-monger who would not have the patience to engage in diplomacy.
    Clinton said: “He (Trump) has said repeatedly that he didn’t care if other nations got nuclear weapons – Japan, South Korea, even Saudi Arabia. It has been the policy of the United States, Democrats and Republicans, to do everything we could to reduce the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
    “So, a man who can be provoked by a tweet shouldn’t have his fingers anywhere near the nuclear codes as far as I think anyone with any sense about this should be concerned.”
    The outcome of the debate may have given a large number of undecided voters the freedom to choose between the two candidates. Post-debate CNN polls showed that 55 per cent of undecided voter believe Trump does not have temperament and capacity to handle the Presidency. This is against 43 per cent who believe Clinton cannot.
    Also, 62 per cent of undecided voters believed Clinton won the debate, while 27 per cent thought Trump won. Although opinions are divided over the performance of the two leading candidates at the debate, but voters in Colorado believe Trump did not say much about his plan to lead the country.
    While concise post-debate traditional polling results on “who is likely to win the race” are still being awaited, Trump may have slid further in losing the support of millennial voters, because of his “woeful performance” at the debate.
    “Trump did not do any better,” says Alexander Price, a millennial voter, who watched the debate at the American Press Club building in Downtown Denver. He said the conduct of the Republican candidate did not change in the debate, saying: “This is a woeful performance for Mr. Trump.”
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