World | USA
World watches closely as US battle rages
Excitement grips ordinary people as US presidential drama reaches its final act.
- AP
- Published: 00:24 November 4, 2008
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Jakarta: When Sri Murtiningsi asked her third grade students what they wanted to be when they grew up, some said they wanted to be doctors and another a pilot. Then one curly haired boy raised his hand: Barack Obama said his dream was to be president.
Forty years later Murtiningsi - like the rest of the world - is watching closely as Americans prepare to head to the polls tomorrow in a historic election that could change the way the US is viewed across the globe.
Many believe Obama's strong international experience would go a long way in helping repair damage caused by the unpopular US-led war in Iraq, with recent opinion polls from more than 70 nations favouring him a resounding three to one over Republican candidate John McCain.
"Obama the best hope for US revival," an editorial in The Australian Financial Review said yesterday, arguing that "the world craves American leadership and never more so than now."
Few if any in the sleepy Japanese coastal town of Obama - which translates as 'little beach' - would disagree. Images of the Democratic candidate adorn banners along a main shopping street and preparations for an election day victory party were in full swing on Monday.
Koichi Inoue, who makes traditional Japanese sweet bean cakes, said his factory was working at double normal production because he had promised free handouts for every customer if Obama won.
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"It looks like he is going to win from the polls," he said, "so I've got to be ready." Interest in the US election is high in Vietnam as well, in part because many people know McCain was shot down in Hanoi while flying an A-4 Skyhawk during a 1967 bombing run and then held prisoner of war for more than five years.
As a US senator in the 1990s, he played a key role in helping normalise relations between the two countries.
"McCain is someone who understands Vietnam," said Phan Manh Tien, 54, a retired soldier and truck driver, though even he prefers Obama because he considers the Democrat, who opposed the Iraq war from the outset, less hawkish.
Not everyone agreed, however.
Le Lan Anh, a Hanoi real estate tycoon and writer, recently completed a novel about a US fighter pilot she said she based on McCain.
She called him "a great man" in part because he passed up the opportunity to leave prison early, ahead of other US inmates.
Many in Pakistan, a close ally in the US war on terror, say they will be glued to television sets and the Internet on election day.
The results, they say, will have broad implications for their own country and Afghanistan, where American forces have been present.
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