Following the epoch-making nomination yesterday of Mr Barrack Obama ahead of former First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton, as Presidential candidate for the Democratic Party in the United States, this paper spoke to various political functionaries in The Gambia with a view to sounding their views on the development.

Ousainou Darboe-Really it is history in the making. In the sense that he is the first time an Afro-American is being nominated as a presidential candidate.

The history would be completed if he is elected as the first Black President. It will also mean the first black First Lady in the White House.

Fifteen to twenty years ago, nobody would have thought of it. It is a far cry from when Jesse Jackson tried to be President of United States.

This indicates that Americans now think of themselves as the same Americans, a history that should be followed even in Africa. That I belong to this tribe or that is irrelevant. We should look at ourselves as people belonging to one nation and be proud to pronounce our nationality.

And to Mr. Obama, I would advise him to follow the agenda and policy that he had presented to the people until he is nominated if he becomes president.

Fatoumata Jahumpa-Ceesay - This is unprecedented in the history of the United States of America for an Afro-American to be nominated to run as a presidential candidate.

As at now, what both Hillary and Obama should do is to come together and work not only in the interest of the Democratic party, but also for the entire Americans.

Hillary Clinton should definitely be congratulated for her courage and enthusiasm as a woman for taking the stand to contest in the presidential nominations.

I believe both of them have very good and sound policies that they presented to the Americans in the run up to the upcoming elections. But all the same, I would like to call on Hillary Clinton to fully rally behind Barrack Obama and give him all the necessary support.

It should not be seen as a gender issue but as part of a democratic process. This is all about democracy.

We are all praying for Barrack Obama to win the presidential election come November. The dream ticket should now become a reality. Let them all work together.

Henry Gomez - It is time now for the whole world to believe that there is God. Nothing is impossible. The Americans with their history have never dreamed that of an Afro-American not to talk about an Afro-African to stand in their country as a presidential candidate. It is a happy moment for the Africans all over. For that we have to be happy and then give thanks to God for making this possible. I am appealing to all politicians in the world to know that it is God who chooses leaders at his own time and day. I am congratulating Barrack Obama and wishing him good luck in the presidential election in November. For Hillary, I am also giving her courage not to give up, as her own time will come. Impossible is nothing.

HALIFA -In my view, Obama’s nomination is just like Mandela’s election and is a memorable event. But we must bear in mind that such events by themselves are not necessarily historic.

What will make Obama’s nomination historic is the type of campaign he will launch and the type of policies and programmes his cabinet will put in place and implement if they were given the opportunity to manage the affairs of the United States.

From my own point of view, he will make a historic departure from the cold war if he moves from the policy of unilateralism in international relations and adopt a policy of multilateralism.

He will give primacy to the United Nations and its charter as well as inter personal conventions in order to handle the problems in the Middle East and other parts of the world.

If he gives significance to advise organisations like the European Union and African Union and engage in consultations with the intelligentia of the world and people with moral authority like Bishop Tutu before formulating international policy for the US, he is likely to bring the US again into mainstream world politics as revered partner instead of being isolated.

He will be taking over at a time when the world’s economy is in crises and environmental consideration are also uppermost in the minds of the world people who are being threatened by climate change.

Barack Obama is an exciting writer, spicing his smooth and engaging prose with colourful details that give it punch and pace. In this engrossing story of his life, Barack retraces his steps to his ancestral home in Alego, Kenya, where he reunited with members of his paternal family and rediscovered himself.

His father, Barack Obama Snr., was 23 years old when he arrived in the United States in 1959 to pursue a degree course at the University of Hawaii. He was the first African student at the university. He excelled and was given another scholarship to study for his doctorate degree at Harvard. On completing his studies, he returned to Kenya where he held various senior government positions. But Dr Obama was too radical for his own good. As a result, he fell out of favour with the Kenyatta government, which made life very difficult for him. Without a job, Dr Obama had to rely on the goodwill of friends and relatives to eke out a miserable existence.

Before leaving for the States, he had been expelled from school due to gross misconduct. And he had to take a correspondence course for the school certificate. Through the help of some visiting Americans, he was able to get a scholarship to study in the States. When he met Ann, the mother of Barack Obama Jnr., at the University of Hawaii, he had already had two children. And he was to have some more with two other different women.

When he walked out on the two-year-old Barack Obama Jnr., Ann took it in good faith and relied on her parents to raise the boy. Later, she fell in love with and married Lolo, an Indonesian student at the university. The family eventually left for Indonesia, where Ann worked at the American embassy. At 4 o’clock in the morning, she would wake up Barack to teach him English. When Barack complained, she said: “Waking up at four every day isn’t a picnic for me either.” But it from Lolo that Barack learnt how to be a man. It was Lolo who taught him how to do press-ups every day and to box. “Your mother has a soft heart… That’s a good thing in a woman. But you will be a man someday, and a man needs to have more sense,” he told Barack one day. He added: “Men take advantage of weakness in other men. They’re just like countries in that way. The strong man takes the weak man’s land. He makes the weak man work in his field. If the weak man’s woman is pretty, the strong man will take her…Better to be strong. If you can’t be strong, be clever and make peace with someone who’s strong. But always better to be strong yourself. Always.” (p.41)

In the wake of her divorce with Lolo, Ann returned with Barack and Maya, Barack’s younger sister, to Hawaii, where she studied for her a Master’s degree in anthropology. It was about this time, Barack’s father visited them and spent some time with the family. He even gave a talk to Barack’s class. His father’s oratory so captivated the class that his classmates who had been scorning him came to respect him and sought his friendship.

After completing his high school, he went to college and then worked as a financial writer before finding his dream job as an organiser in poor communities in the south side of Chicago. It was during this time, he met the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who is to be his spiritual guide right up until now. Like his father, he attended Harvard, where he read law.

Dreams from My Father is a moving story of one man’s quest to gain a better understanding of the world and play his part to make it a better place for everyone. It offers an insight into the circumstances that have shaped America’s probable first black president.

Barack Obama wrote Dreams from My Father after he was elected as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review.

It is highly recommended by The Point.

It is available at TIMBOOKTOO.

Well done Barrack Obama! The Democratic front runner has done what so many African leaders have failed to do and critisised Robert Mugabe for not releasing the results of the election held on March 29th. The US Senator was unafraid in his words. He said that the people of Zimbabwe were tired of Mugabe’s failed policies, which have reduced the country from the breadbasket of Africa to a basket case. This is leadership. The Zambian President, Levy Mwanwasa, has called for an emergency meeting of the Southern African Development Committee. This is in contrast to Thabo Mbeki’s call for patience and the deafening silence ringing out from the State Houses and Palaces of other African leaders. In the spirit of African unity we must do all that we can to help our brothers and sisters in Zimbabwe by forcing Mugabe and his party to release the results or leave office. It is becoming clearer by the day that there is trickery afoot.

The BBChas hard evidence that Police officers were ordered to vote for Robert Mugabe before the election so the mind boggles at the thought of what is going on behind the scenes at the moment with regard to the results of the ballot.

Our neighbours in Senegal have shown their leadership and their Pan-African justice credentials in recent days by changing the constitution to allow for the trial of the ex-Chadian leader Hissene Habre. The man, described as Africa’s Pinochet, is accused of human rights abuses during his eight years in power.

This is the kind of action that we need to see on the continent. All nations must support their neighbours and ensure that justice is available to all African people. It is too late to save the people of Chad from this man but at least they can get a form of justice if he is tried.

It is not too late however for the people of Zimbabwe. All African leaders must speak out against this mockery of democracy. The power is in the hands of all African leaders to stand up for the people of Zimbabwe because it is now crystal clear that Robert Mugabe is putting his pride, power lust and well being before that of his people. It’s reported that Mugabe and other African leaders were expecting an easy ride from Barrack Obama because of his African roots but this young man has once again risen above the issue of race and put truth and justice ahead of everything else. If he is elected to the office of United States President the unjust in Africa can expect a torrid time. African leaders who are fair and just, do not cling to power, don’t persecute journalists and put the needs of their people before their own can expect the support and friendship of the worlds most powerful nation and its President.

It beats anyone’s imagination to think of idiots sitting at computers in the West and writing absolute lies against their country in the name of journalism. Just imagine this. You are away from your country.

You have no idea what is going on here. But you are hellbent on maligning the reputation of other people, and your motherland, because some unimaginable cancerous worm, whose nature we cannot fathom, is squirming through your little brain and playing havoc with the tiny bit of intelligent thinking that you may possess.

Or is it the challenges of niggerhood in racist UK and US that is dismantling any vistages of rationality you may have possessed before you left peaceful and humane Gambia? We don’t know what is wrong with some of these deranged idiots.

But what we do know is this. Many of their stories, so-called reports and imagined interviews are simply false. As for The Gambia, it is a peaceful country, and inspite of what this idiots wish, we know that with the blessing of Allah, it will continue to be so. Inshallah.

Clinton & Obama, we thought. But should it be Obama & Clinton?

Last week wepenned an editorial titled the Dream-Ticket, in which we imagined Hillary Clinton as the Democrats Presidential candidate with Obama as her running mate.

Well, in a few heady days, Obama is proving to us and most of the world that we may be wrong. Maybe it should be Obama for President and Hillary for Vice-President. This indeed looks like it may be the option. But spare a thought former President Bill Clinton - sent out to grass on his desolate farm somewhere in Arkansas, while President Obama and his VP get cooped up in the Oval Office, smoking cigars and doing God knows what!

EXCHANGE RATE:  DOLLAR- D21.50    POUND- D41.50     EURO- D31.50

The United State of America might be an independent sovereign state with a uniquely defined political history, but its unequivocal role in global issues makes it a centrepiece.

Whatever concerns this superpower of a nation, equally concerns the rest of the world - even the remotest area on this planet and beyond. It is often said that when America sneezes, the rest of the world catches cold. This is seen or realised on a number of fronts - economic, security, political, etc.

For instance, the ‘war on terror’ is being fought for America thousands of miles away from her shores. And also the so-called credit crunch is being felt in major financial centres far far away from Washington DC, where the plug is being pulled by the 51% US owned so-called World Bank.

This explains the level of interest of the outside world in the  election of American presidents and other authorities. Actually, the kind of person that occupies that White House tells loads about the country’s relationship with the rest of the world. Perhaps this is what the good people of this great nation know that makes them wary about who they put in it.

Moderation is a key value in American society. Admittedly, this is a virtue, and it can be rightly linked to the steady progress towards the American dream. In order to convince their electorates, aspiring candidates do everything reticently, apparently to keep from public awareness the slightest clue of fanatical manifestation of any kind. Americans are a people that shun extremism in every aspect of life - until it catches them by surprise whenever a commie-hating, Islam-bashing  and bible-thumping President gets into the White House!

Talking about moderation, the charged countdown to the much fancied ‘Super Tuesday’ took a new - but not an altogether surprising - turn. The most celebrated moderate Americans were been used as the yardstick. And again, the focus was more on the democrats than their republican opponents. First it was the fracas on the role of one of America’s most popular, if not the most popular, black citizen, Martin Luther King Junior.

The level of destruction that caused the candidature of both Clinton and Obama was more or less the same in proportion. But they both were quick to make up for it. Americans, they probably would have admitted to themselves, are certainly not ready to kill the spirit of their dream, even before it is realised, by attacking the architects of that dream. Soon the two candidates were speaking in a typical democrat tongue. A rather familiar American identity.

Later, the debate shifted to the legendary Ronald Reagan. And interestingly, it was not the republicans but rather it was the democrats that were sparing no effort in likening themselves to the arch-Republican and all-the-above-extreme-things Reagan! Who said America is ever divided? Never!

And so we come, dear patient reader, to the surprise they have in store for us. It will be a Dream-Ticket of Clinton for President and Obama for VP come November. First woman and first black man in the formerly all-male-caucasian-protestant White House. Surprised? Surely you didn’t think this before?