Tag: Joe Biden

By Mike Kebonkwu

Joe Biden, the president of America was poised to enter into the ring a second time with the maverick Republican candidate, former president, Donald Trump in the forthcoming general election November.  Old, weak and almost infirm, Biden believes though quite delusionary, that he was the only person with a chance to defeat Trump in the election.

He had ignored advice and entreaties from ranking party members and adamant to hints from his body physiology to step down bearing on his slow physical agility and mental acuity. Politicians are hardly intuitive whenever they get to power whether in Africa, Asia, Europe or America.  They are driven by lust for power and do not know when to quit the stage. With his gait and calibration becoming so weak with faltering missteps and gaffes, he was still ready to soldier on.  

As it is often said in the Christendom, God rules in the affairs of men; and Americans pride themselves as God’s own country!  Joe Biden had told his American compatriots that he would not step down from the race unless the Lord Almighty spoke to him. Lo and behold, the Lord spoke and the number one politician in America heard Him and tendered a letter of resignation from the race. America is indeed God’s own country! 

Our own former president, Muhammadu Buhari spent more time in hospital in Europe from the time he was sworn in for the first term due to debilitating health condition and that did not stop him from contesting for a second record time even though he was absent-minded most of the time.

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So you can now understand when our own politicians visit marabouts, pastors and consult herbalists and oracles to hear from the deities in their shrines like the Okija shrine for political endorsement.  We cannot forget so soon the celebrated testimonies during enquiries on defence spending how some politicians were said to have collected hefty sums of money from a former national security adviser (NSA) to consult pastors, imams and other star gazers and spiritualists to win the election.

American election is highly partisan; people vote along party lines not necessarily based on any ideological persuasion.  The American people are also proudly calculating enough to exercise objective assessment of the capacity of their political leaders and would not allow a senile invalid to lead the greatest power on earth. They know how to throw their dice in political gamble and would rather vote an unpredictable maniac than someone slowed down by age and mental health challenges.

America with its expensive presidential system is still perceived as a model of democracy but appears to have lost it virginity when Trump supporters invaded the Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021.   The American democracy has been on rapid descent lately being inflicted with geriatric malaise and gerontocracy where the two frontrunners in the forthcoming election are well above 70 years of age. The issue actually goes beyond the age but their state of mind and physical strength because someone may be old and still be strong and fertile. Come November, the Americans will head to the polls without Joe Biden due to celestial intervention of the Almighty God.  In withdrawing, Biden endorsed his incumbent vice president as his nominee; and soon after it has been endorsement galore for Kamala Harris.  This is before the forthcoming party convention later in August and one therefore begins to wonder the role of delegates for the convention which has clearly become a fait accompli. 

Their America is certainly becoming not too different from our own dear Africa after all in political behaviours. I am still struggling to figure out the place of political endorsement and exercise of freedom of choice by the people in democratic system.  

It will be revolutionary and historical if Kamala Harris wins the party ticket and proceeds to win the election and thus becoming the first female president of the United States of America.  Kamala Harris is a unique personality in every material particular being a ‘hybrid’ American with Afro-Asian roots, and a fearsome prosecutor. Are the American public and the Establishment ready for a female president and coloured for that matter?  This will be the dilemma for the electorate.  This will also in all probability throw the white supremacist in wild frenzy as in their inflammatory rhetoric, “to make America great once again” to do everything to subvert the process. 

The lesson here is that there are bad politicians in America just as we also could count good politicians in our own clime. Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, former president conceded victory to an opposition even before the final votes were collated even when some of his party members were scheming and acting as gangsters at the collation centre to subvert  the counting.   Umaru Musa Yar’Adua acknowledged that the election that brought him to office as president “had shortcomings” and promised electoral reforms which he could not achieve before his demise. 

On January 6, 2021 the American symbol of democracy at the Capitol Hill was desecrated when Trump supporters stormed and invaded the parliament to subvert the electoral process.  Before this time he had enlisted the white supremacists, the Proud Boys to standby as they were ready to go to any length to have Trump back at the White House.  Just the same way politicians here recruit touts, hooligans and gangsters to rig election and snatch ballots. 

One is unable to see why people are praising Biden to high heavens for withdrawing from the race. There was nothing honourable or ennobling about his action to deserve any ovation after all he was quite adamant and ready to go on in his desperation with obvious gaffes.  It was clear he could not have continued in the race with obvious physical and mental deceleration.  Before now, it was probably a general belief that it is only in Africa that you have geriatrics and gerontocracy, where the ghost of ancestors with senile dementia hold on to political power.

While Biden had with him a lot of experience in public service as a politician, Trump is a wheeler-dealer business tycoon and an outsider with  mercantile mentality ready to trade off anything if it advances his empire.  To him, whatever money cannot buy does not exist!  He is combustible and highly unpredictable and has the capacity to throw the entire world into a state of frenzy and possible world war contrary to his campaign spark that he is the only person gifted to avert a Third World War.

America has remained a world power whose sphere of influence is diminishing due to declining quality of political leadership. It is still standing as first class military power to reckon with even though it is also being challenged by emerging possible military coalitions.  Both Biden and Trump are not fit candidates to run the biggest global bureaucracy.   Biden clearly lacks the speed of motion and thought and has become absent minded while Trump is an accident waiting to happen. 

It is about time to interrogate the whole business or concept of modern democracy and whether politicians actually have the interest of the people and nations at heart.  Had Biden remained in the race, Trump place at the Oval Office was a done deal with Republicans poised to win.  Kamala Harris has become a nightmare to Trump who will stop at nothing, attacking everything about her including to her motherhood.   Without a doubt, to some extent, global peace and security depend so much on the person that emerges as the president of the United States of America with its sphere of influence in trade and the war chest of its military.  The younger generations of leadership across the world are not generating enough energy to lead because of lack of deep mentoring.  This is also a lesson for us here if only we can overcome the bug of religion and ethnicity. 

•Kebonkwu Esq is an Abuja-based attorney. He writes via mikekebonkwu@yahoo.com

By Alade Fawole

Few days ago, news came that US President Joe Biden would, contrary to earlier stand, not be running for a second term of office. Informed sources insinuated he was actually pressured into or had this decision forced on him by the real powers in the Democratic Party, and by the threat of major campaign donors to cease funding support. Since he bluntly refused to gloriously close his long political career by himself, force majeure abruptly terminated it for him.

Since this not-so-glorious ouster from the contest for the presidency, many across the globe have effusively praised him for his ‘statesmanship’, ‘patriotism’ and dedication to the finest ethos of democracy. I don’t buy any of that claptrap. This paper in an editorial (July 25) also dubbed it as a “noble act” and “a step for democracy.” I doubt anyone seriously means these ego-massaging statements; it’s probably the courteous and diplomatic thing to say in the circumstance.

Accepting not to run for a second term ab initio would have been the most statesmanlike thing to do. He knew all along that he is no longer fit and suitable for the onerous task of presiding over the most powerful nation on the planet and with a finger close to the ominous red button that could trigger a nuclear Armageddon and terminate human civilization as we know it. Only a physically, mentally fit and alert person should be allowed such a highly sensitive and globally consequential office as President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of its vast armed forces spread over 800 bases in about 80 countries and all the world’s oceans. Not seeking a second term would simply have been an admission of the obvious human frailties of old age, not one to be celebrated.

Had he done that at the appropriate time, he would have given his Democratic Party a greater chance for adequate mobilization against a formidable nemesis like former President Donald Trump who had already gained considerable mileage in the race for the White House long before he was recently garlanded at the just concluded GOP Convention. He had also built a colossal campaign war chest from billionaire donors to boot. Frustrated that Biden would not do the right thing, even after his plainly disastrous performance in the televised presidential debate with Trump, the real powers in the party swiftly decided to push him out before he completely wrecked the party and totally ruined the chances for the Congressional candidates standing for re-election in November.

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 Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he has had to endorse, has also been gifted needed endorsement by the party’s grey eminences and wealthy donors but may still have to slug it out with other contenders for the prize at the Democratic Convention in August. No doubt, Biden’s obduracy has unduly harmed or constricted his party’s chances of defeating Donald Trump in November. But then, never say never, for 24 hours is a long time in politics.

Why do I consider Biden’s ouster a good riddance? The most honest thing for me is his toxic reputation as a bloody-thirsty warmonger, with neither qualms nor compunction in wilfully sacrificing hundreds of thousands of human lives in other parts of the world for the satisfaction of personal political aspirations. He instigated the ongoing war in Ukraine by intentionally provoking Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, only to cynically condemn it as “unprovoked attack.” Holders of power often lie so brazenly because there aren’t any consequences for bad behaviour. Under the pretext that Ukraine would be admitted into NATO, thereby pouring more than $100 billion of lethal armaments into a war he knows quite well Ukraine never had any hope of winning, Biden is vicariously responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers and civilians. His administration’s main agenda is to employ Ukraine as a hapless proxy and a battering ram to achieve destruction of Russia’s economic and military power. Instead, it is Ukraine that has been destroyed, turned into a rump state, with millions of its citizens internally displaced and millions more as refugees in other countries; a fifth of its original territory now fully under Russian military occupation, with nary a chance of ever regaining it by armed contest.

Both the Biden-enabled and facilitated Russia-Ukraine war and Israel’s genocidal slaughter in Gaza have caused the world considerable hardship and discomfort – global supply chain disruptions, and blocking of vital sea-lanes to prevent adequate supply of necessities for survival and development. European countries, now fatally hobbled by energy shortage and higher prices after US destruction of Russia’s pipeline that hitherto had supplied cheap gas to fire their industries and heat their homes, have become pathetic vassal states. They are paying the price for the foolishness of not taking Henry Kissinger’s famous admonition to heart: it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be its friend is fatal!

 Since October 7, 2023, Israeli military, wilfully enabled by Biden, has ceaselessly and heartlessly slaughtered hundreds of thousands of defenceless Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children, brazenly committing horrendous acts that constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes of genocide in the eye of international law, all to please the Israel lobby to support and fund his re-election campaign. The result of his relentless supply of lethal American weapons and billions of dollars in economic assistance to the apartheid state of Israel is the ceaseless daily flow of barrels of innocent blood in Gaza. Though he has the power to stanch this needless flow of blood, his political ambition would not let him consider it. 

Power is both sweet and corrupting, and those who hold it or aspire to hold it risk becoming bad people. To hold on to power requires doses of ruthlessness and inhumanity, and President Biden is prominently in this category. Ukraine, Gaza, and the risk of nuclear Armageddon by taunting and provoking nuclear-armed Russia and China in their own geopolitical neighbourhoods, all to sustain the image of a great wartime president and commander-in-chief. But then, in the words of British historian, Lord Acton (1834-1902), “Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority.” Biden is such a bad man.

It definitely must be in the DNA of politicians to be selfish, self-seeking and self-serving. Are we not always being persuaded, by the same politicians of course, that politics is about serving the good of the public? If so, why do politicians the world over almost always exhibit both subtle and reckless predilection for selfishness and utter disregard for public wishes? What more could Biden at 81 years old still want? He has been in public office for all of five decades – US Senate for 36 years (1973-2009), Vice President for eight years (2009-2017), and at the pinnacle of power as President for four years (2021-2024). At 81, his physical and mental decrepitude glaring to all, still wanted to run for office for another four years! Power must be too sweet to let go. And yet American leaders have the cheek to excoriate Africa’s sit-tight rulers. Imagine the impertinence.

•Professor Fawole writes from Ikire, Osun State.