When Amerikans spoke

Like I had told you earlier, I went to Amerika for the sole purpose of observing the 2012 presidential elections and report back to the home folks all about the same. You very well know that Mr. Barack Obama is my relative. Yes, stop frowning, he is my cousin. I mean a cousin of my father’s neighbour’s uncle’s neighbour’s brother…and so, we are related! This makes me the home boy, fit to report on whatever is happening here!During the campaigns close to the elections, there was a lot of Republican talks of our man having failed here or there but that has not dampened our enthusiasm as Africans, as you know, he is one of us in blood and flesh! What really amazed many of us was how the polls always swung from one side to the other as the participants fought hard to get to the white house! The campaigns were really based on issues like the state of the economy, unemployment, Obama Care, etc. It was like a race between the rich and the poor, where one side was for the rich and the other for the rich.At some point, Governor Mitt Romney declared that the Obama Care was such a waste of tax payers’ money and he had sworn to repeal it once he was in White House. Ironically, the Obama Care is here to stay because he has lost. He even once stated that nearly 47 per cent of Americans depend on handouts and are a burden to the State because they do not pay taxes. Let us hope that it is not this 47 per cent that “cursed” him into losing the race to the White House! Those that survive on the “Food Stamps” are less fortunate than those that have jobs paying in four or even digits of salaries. The other question was about immigration. As suggested by Governor Romney, he was wary of immigrants; he seemed to forget the basic America principle, “America was built on Immigrants”! The American electoral system is quite different from ours; one could have many votes but fail to win the majority in electoral colleges. Electoral colleges are a very simple way of being fairly representative of the whole country. This seems to suggest that one must win across the country! Polls close in a few minutes, results are out minutes later, as a matter of fact, the first polls on the East Coast closed at around 7:00pm, the last ones on the West Coast closed nearly three hours later (there is a 3-hour time difference), a few minutes later, the last results were tallied and the Empire State Building announced it all! Americans had chosen to go BLUE once again! At first, the Romney camp could not believe their eyes, they decided to play the wait-and-see game, hoping that some unaccounted for votes would turn up and swing the status quo in their direction. But this was not to be; Mr. Obama’s electoral colleges were soaring up past the required 270 and when they clocked 300, the Romney camp had to concede defeat! As a matter of fact, most Black Americans, Latinos and African immigrants, voted for Mr. Obama. The Conservatives could not tilt the balance otherwise. This is a true manifestation of where the Americanpower lies. As I write this article, there is a party going on in my Boston MA neighbourhood. I, together with many Africans, have been invited by our Diaspora brothers to celebrate the victory of one of us.