The world woke up on Wednesday November the 5th to a new leader of the “free” world; Barack Hussein Obama was elected president of the United States of America.
My mum woke me up at 6:30 AM telling me he won the elections, I hugged her, ran straight to the TV, took a glance at the masses gathered at the Times square, heard them chanting "Yes We Can" and then fell right back to sleep.
When I woke up however I started asking myself why I reacted that way to the news. It’s not like I’m an American citizen, but what made me pursue finding out was how I saw that almost my entire friends list on Facebook had their statuses in support of and rooting for Obama.
To the world, it’s a global win; the whole world is celebrating Obama’s victory. The President of Kenya where Obama was born declared a public holiday, school children in Indonesia were celebrating, Egyptians are congratulating one another and even Europeans are welcoming the change. But why?!
My personal wish list is that Obama walks into the White House, swipes out the previous American Foreign Policies towards the Middle East, putting Israel in their right place, sending back his troops from Iraq, helping out the Palestinians and becoming the first president to take a stand for the Middle East, Arabs and Muslims.
This is way too farfetched or maybe not, but isn’t this what we’re all thinking? Isn’t this the reason why we all wanted him to win and not McCain? We are all hoping that the president of dare I say, the world, would be a fair, sane one as opposed to his successor aren’t we?
But why do I believe in Obama? Why do we all believe in Obama? He promised HIS people to make a change not us, so how do we know that this change will be to our benefit? Is it the Barack "Hussein" Obama effect? Is it him being an African American?! Or is it his Nasser like charisma that got the whole world hooked?
We should all postpone our victory dances until two years into his presidency, we should see if he does bring about that change he promised his people, and we should be careful as to where we place our trust.
When the day comes and proves himself to the world, I’ll be the first to congratulate him by saying “Yes You Did” because as far as I’m concerned, he still hasn’t yet.
