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World View
- By Joseph Marques, Chief Sub-Editor
- Published: 00:11 June 6, 2008
Barack Obama created history as the first African-American to win the nomination of a political party for the US presidential election. After a bitter neck and neck contest between Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, it finally came to an end with Obama emerging victorious. The food crisis is the other main issue that made headlines this week. World leaders held a summit in Rome to find solutions to the rising food prices and to increase production. The events were contemplated, analysed and commented on. We present here excerpts of editorials from the regional and the international press.
It's Obama
Barack Obama is now the official presidential candidate of the Democratic party. He is the first African-American ever to contest the presidential election and will face Republican John McCain in the November poll.
The New York Times which had endorsed Hillary Clinton's nomination acknowledged that it did it while there were still votes to be cast. Describing her resilience, it said: "The long and gruelling primary campaigns left no doubt about the depth of her intelligence, the strength of her will and the power of her ideas. But they left many Americans with nagging doubts about her character because the greater blame for the campaigns' negativity fell on Clinton." And added: "If she withdraws by the end of the week and throws her considerable support to Obama, as her aides say she plans to do, she has a chance to start to allay those doubts."
Still backing Clinton as Obama's running mate, it remarked: "For Obama, the leadership test begins with giving Clinton's backers a place in his campaign. They have passion and talent and can help make Obama an even stronger candidate in what could well be a very tough race."
The Christian Science Monitor asked: "Can he [Obama] graciously find a role for her [Clinton] and unite a party that just fought a very long primary contest, one that revealed sharp divisions of gender, race, and class?"
It then said: "The answer may lie in one reason for his historic upset. He tried to change the nature of campaigning, from one of personal smears, a-slap-for-a-slap, and chameleon-like pandering to a more elevated tone. Again, though, he only barely succeeded in doing that against the Clinton camp's old-style politicking. Normally cool under fire, he often retaliated when he didn't need to."
However, it stated that Obama may face a testing time to prove his claim as a "unifying president".
"If he can remake Democrats into a team, he'll then be tested on his claim of doing the same for the country," it said.
"Whoever won, it was bound to be a milestone in American political history. That moment has arrived and it has taken Obama's victory beyond the realm of personal achievement. It would have not been any less historic had Hillary Clinton been the winner. Both race and gender are live issues in the US and both are differently, but equally, important," stated The Times of India.
"As far as India is concerned, Obama is perhaps the least known for his views. McCain and Clinton have a clear position on where New Delhi fits in the emerging world. In that scheme, India ranks pretty high. Obama appears to share no such vision, at least not yet. But, irrespective of whether eventually McCain wins or Obama does, there's no denying that a page has been turned in America's history," it added.
Food summit
At a three-day summit in Rome, world leaders met to discuss the precarious food crisis that is threatening to snowball into a live and death situation for millions of people throughout the world.
Commenting on the issue, Washington Post said that the sense of urgency surrounding the meeting was appropriate. "With commodity prices at their highest levels in three decades, some 100 million people who had been lifted out of chronic poverty are at risk of slipping back. Famine once again threatens vulnerable countries such as North Korea. Yet, massive as it is, the short-term problem of getting food relief into the hands of the hungry is probably the simplest item on the summit agenda. Much more complex is the long-term task of restoring the world's ability to feed itself at widely affordable prices," it remarked.
It suggested steps to tide over the situation by working on a green revolution and investing in Africa's agricultural sector.
"Today's higher prices, however, probably will persist even if ethanol and export bans disappear. This creates an opportunity as well as a need for a new surge in agricultural investment. It should be led by the United States and other industrialised countries, and it should be focused on the region - sub-Saharan Africa - where the greatest untapped potential lies, and which has so far benefited least from the green revolution."
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