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Written by Sen. Edgardo J. Angara
Sen. Barack Obama’s victory ushers in a new day for the United States and the rest of the world as well.
Obama’s pledge to extend and intensify diplomacy with other countries marks a turnaround from President Bush’s unilateral stance against countries at loggerheads with the US, its refusal to sign the Kyoto Protocol and cooperate with the International Criminal Court.
The overwhelmingly positive reception overseas to Senator Obama’s election is quite a good start. This goodwill could rekindle strained talks on delicate issues, such as farm subsidies and nuclear-weapons proliferation.
France President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country benefits the most from farm subsidies in Europe, is in good terms with Obama who, in turn, has unveiled a farm plan that would limit farm subsidies in the US.
For the first time since 1979, an Iranian President congratulated a US president-elect. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a fervent opponent of the Bush administration, also expressed willingness to enter into direct talks with Obama. Even Hamas, an Islamic group tagged as terrorists by the Bush administration, has said it is open to dialogue with the US president-elect.
In Asia, Spire Research & Consultancy predicts that Obama’s presidency would have a mixed impact. The dollar would be stronger in an Obama administration compared with a McCain’s, and this, coupled with Obama’s plan to stimulate consumer spending, would be favorable to exporters.
This is a welcome development for the Philippines’ electronics sector, which comprises 50 percent of our exports and has been suffering a setback from the US financial crisis.
On the other hand, Obama’s proposal to provide tax incentives for corporations that generate domestic employment could affect the vitality of our business-process outsourcing sector, which currently employs 300,000 Filipinos.
Obama’s vision of greening America would certainly be beneficial to the Philippines, in particular, setting a precedent for renewable-energy (RE) programs and technologies that we could adopt. Fortunately, a comprehensive framework on renewable energy will soon be in place when the Renewable Energy Act, which I authored and sponsored, is signed into law. Obama’s initiative to go green could also provide a strong impetus for RE investments in the Philippines.
Obama’s victory has inspired hope and demonstrated how democratic elections should be—prompt, peaceful and imbued with sportsmanship. It offers old and new lessons for presidential candidates in the Philippines in 2010, whose early political machinations impede both the Executive and Legislature from moving forward.
Obama’s and McCain’s campaigns educated and informed the American voters of their respective party platforms, rather than the vilification and dirty tricks typical in the Philippines. Both Obama and Sen. John McCain campaigned on issues that deeply affect voters—jobs, health care, education, energy independence, taxation—and each presented and was challenged by the other candidate in an intelligent, well-thought out manner.
For the first time since 18-year-olds were allowed to vote in 1972, the youth vote became decisive in the US elections. Composed of mobile-and-Internet savvy 18- to 29-year-olds, the youth voted for Obama and Biden in an unprecedented 66 percent-to-32 percent ratio. Obama attracted the largest percentage of the youth vote since exit polls began reporting results by age categories in 1976.
The power of electronic media to raise funds and reach voters was also overwhelmingly demonstrated during Obama’s campaign. Not only did he shattered campaign records by soliciting $600 million, but a substantial part of it came from small donations given by people through the Internet. He raised $150 million in September alone, 75 percent of which came from Internet users.
The Internet also provided an avenue for Obama the modern equivalent of a whistle-stop campaign train to communicate his message to millions of millions of people.
And the US media displayed its most effective role in unmasking the unqualified among the aspirants—a tendency we have yet to see in the Philippines.
Many analysts claim that McCain stepped into a quicksand when he said that the US economy’s fundamentals were strong at a time financial institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, have collapsed. He pushed for maintaining a regime of deregulation, when public sentiment favored a more activist governmental role, a government bail out.
These must be some valuable lessons our 2010 presidential wannabees should learn from the US election.
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