“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players;”.
The man for whom Shakespeare wrote is Barack Obama ,the 44th President of the United States. He came to the world’s stage in 2008 as the 21ST century President to transform the 19th century world. On Tuesday, 20 September, he made his last appearance on the world’s stage to deliver his final message of hope to the citizens of the globalized world. Addressing the 71st UN General Assembly, he highlighted the forces of globalization, integration, inter-connectedness, and interdependence. “We all are stakeholders in this globalization”, he said, admitting that there is a “deep fault- line in the existing international order”, which needs a ” course correction”, and yet it will be self- defeating to try to reverse globalization. Globalization , he said, has made the world less violent and more prosperous. “We all face a choice – a better model of cooperation and integration or division “,he emphasized. Democracy and open market have reduced extreme poverty from 40% to 10%. World economy and ‘our international order is successful’, he claimed, stressing that global integration needs knowledge. “A world in which one percent of humanity controls as much wealth as the other 99 percent will never be stable,” he warned. Nearly $8 trillion has been stashed away in tax haven. Pervasive sense of injustice is causing unrest.
Centrally controlled economy is at dead end and oligarchies will rot from within. There is no place for so- called strongman from the top, he said, taking aim at Vladimir Putin’s Soviet nostalgia and Donald Trump’s narcissist megalomania. The world needs inclusive and accountable government, rule of law and independent judiciary. “The United States,” he said, was built on the principles of ” liberty, individual human rights, freedom and dignity and opportunity, and we reject fundamentalism, racism or ethnic superiority”. He strongly denounced the mindset of sectarianism, dehumanizing and domination and said, discrimination frays “bonds of civilization”. Market economy has helped billions. Number of democracies have doubled in 25 years. ‘Build, rather than destroy’, he urged but ‘don’t build walls’, because ‘the world is too small for walls’. ‘Nations harm themselves, if they surround themselves with walls’, he said, adding ‘mosquitoes don’t respect walls’.
The President who is a strong advocate of free market economy and liberalized trade is a staunch supporter of NAFTA, EU, ASEAN, and TPP. His faith in democracy is unflinching.” “True democracy remains the better path and the firmest foundation for human progress”, he assured the world leaders, as he repudiated “crude populism” that has mushroomed in the United States and around the world. He had more direct message for his Russian counterpart, accusing Putin -who has invaded Ukraine and deployed forces to Syria-of using the military to gain global clout. “In a world that left the age of empire behind, we see Russia attempting to recover lost glory through force,” the President said. By the same token he cautioned China’s increasingly powerful leader Xi Jinping that adhering to the rule of law offers “far greater stability than the militarization of a few rocks and reefs” in the South China Sea. He restated the case for multilateralism, ‘a new era of engagement’ and an America that knows its own might. And even as the Syrian ceasefire brokered by Secretary John Kerry lay in tatters , he insisted diplomacy, not force – is the only way to end the brutal five-year conflict.
President Obama organized the Leaders’ Summit on Refugees at UN headquarters the same day to address the global problem. A record 65 million people are currently displaced worldwide because of conflicts, both within their countries and outside their borders. The 1951 Refugee Convention, signed by most nations, obligates the signatories to offer protection to all those fleeing war and persecution.
In his speech before the General Assembly, he made an impassioned appeal to the world community to help the refugees. The same day Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. caused uproar on social media by comparing Syrian refugees to the fruit flavored sweets Skittles. Trying to suggest the U.S. should not accept any refugees, Trump Jr. posted an image that asked:” If I had a bowl of skittles and I told you just three will kill you, would you take a handful?” “That’s our Syrian refugee problem, “he said, adding ,”This image says it all”. The food analogy has been used to imply that, if a few people in a group are bad, it would be dangerous to take a single one in.
The analogy applies to the Trump family even more accurately. In the RNC Melania Trump was found guilty of plagiarizing the speech of the U.S. First Lady Mitchel Obama. She was caught red-handed by the media and she admitted the guilt. So by the same Trump Jr. reasoning the entire Trump Family including Donald Trump himself should be ostracized and thrown out of the race which is not meant for thieves and criminals.
Trump himself brought the insinuating charge against President Obama alleging that he was not born in the United States and then after launching the” birther” movement for long five years he shamelessly admitted in public that he was guilty of bringing false charge against the President of the United States who was elected by 52% of American voters. By the same reasoning isn’t Trump Jr. guilty of the same offence? Does it not disqualify him and other members of Trump family from entering the White House alongside Donald Trump who can still be sued for the offence of bringing false allegations against an American citizen?
The fellow is totally ill informed about the ground reality in Syria where, during last five years of conflict which is not their doing, 400,000 innocent men, women and children have lost their lives, 6 million are displaced and 2 million children are out of school for four years. Following the tweet by the Republican presidential candidate’s son the company that owns Skittles Wrigley, stepped in:” Kittles are candy. Refugees are people,” said Denise Young, Vice-president of corporate affairs for Wrigley America. ” We don’t feel it is an appropriate analogy,” she said. Kids who love candy know this simple truth.
But mindless adults remain ignorant even at their70s. No wonder former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who was Pentagon Chief under Republican President George Bush and Democrat Barack Obama and has worked with eight presidents posted an op-ed piece on Friday in the Wall Street Journal : “I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. “He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in Chief”.
President Obama won the election beating John McCain by 52% to 46%. On the momentous night, the Democrat swept to victory in almost all the battleground states, including Florida and Ohio. Indiana and Virginia voted for a Democratic President for the first time since 1964. As thousands of his supporters celebrated, Obama said that “change has come to America”.
Many people in the world reacted with cheers to America’s election of a thrilling, new president -young, black, with political and intellectual gifts. International enthusiasm for America’s new president was hardly surprising, given the rapturous welcome he enjoyed when touring Europe in the summer. 200,000 Germans turned out to cheer him in Berlin and he enjoyed tremendous global goodwill. He is a courteous, and celebral Harvard- educated lawyer with rare gift for inspiring and uniting people from most diverse backgrounds.
His election marked a turning point in American history. President Obama is the great conciliator who coordinated the rescue of the world economy which faced the worst depression since 1930, tackled climate change, reformed global institutions and above all revived America itself and kept it safe.
[Writer was elected MP in the 7th and 8th Parliaments of Bangladesh]
