PRIME MINISTER Liz Truss resigned as British Prime Minister and the ruling Conservative Party held a contest to succeed her. But the contest didn’t happen. There was no vote among the members of the party to choose a new leader; there was no vote among the Conservative Party MPs to choose their new leader.

Here is how Mr. Sunak became PM. Each candidate had to get 100 signatures from Conservative MPs in order for the contest to take place. The party decided the MPs would choose the next leader, not the general membership.
Only Sunak secured 100 signatures and he became the Prime Minister. Shouldn’t there have been a simple democratic process in which people throw their hat in the ring and face a vote of party members?
Mr. Sunak was no mesmerising or exciting or even interesting Prime Minister. He faced a general election two years after being selected rather than being elected as PM. His party was devastated at the poll.

Across the ocean, President Biden announced that he would not run again. Instead of doing a primary where candidates would compete against each other, Ms. Harris was anointed by a small group within the Democratic Party led by its most influential figure, Mrs. Nancy Pelosi.
Shouldn’t there have been a democratic process that allowed candidates to participate in a primary? It is quite possible that there were voices within the Democratic Party calling for a primary but they were stifled. It is quite possible that in a primary, Harris would have lost and another candidate could have emerged who maybe would have beaten Trump.

The point being made here is that democracy and freedom to choose that were rammed down our throat after Independence by the West are not practised in those very countries. Mr. Sunak became Prime Minister without facing the electorate of his own party. Over in the United States, Mrs. Harris was anointed by her party rather than have her face a primary battle. I am convinced that Mrs. Harris would have lost the primary.

But the Democratic Party was focused on Trump whom they deeply felt was so unelectable so any Democratic nominee would defeat him. What every person living in the post-colonial world needs to reflect on is that the Democratic Party lost the 2024 presidential election because the Democratic Party did not use the democratic method to elect its presidential nominee.

Here is why I think another candidate would have done better. Harris faced three insurmountable hurdles. First, Biden was not popular and Americans wanted him gone. Secondly, as a spin off from this, any candidate seen close to Biden would be categorised the way Biden was. Mrs. Harris wore her Biden badge on her shirt-sleeve.

Not only did she tell the hosts of “The View” that she would not have done anything differently from Biden, but she went on to add that she was part of all the major decisions the Biden Administration made. Why Harris made two such unbelievable mistakes?
Because she felt, A – she could beat Trump anyway so she did not have to be diplomatic or strategic; B- Mrs. Harris romanticised the past in her election campaign. She inhaled the nostalgia of the Obama era and believed that the aura and emotions the Obama campaign generated will be there in her campaign.

Mrs. Harris was an extremely poor analyst of politics. Mr. Obama boasted after Trump defeated Mrs. Clinton in 2016 that if he had run again he would have won. This was wasteful boasting. Mr. Obama hemorrhaged votes in his reelection bid. Under his presidency in the reelection results, the incumbent, Democratic Party suffered their biggest losses in the governorship, House of Representative and Senate combined than under any Democratic president.

By the time he won re-election, Mr. Obama’s star was fading. Americans of all stripes and colours wanted Obama to win. They believed it was time for an Afro-American to be the president. As his term came to an end, Mr. Obama had lost unlimited support not only in the US but in the world. It was hoped that he would be a different president that would transform the US. But that did not happen. By 2016, Americans accepted that the Obama experiment did not work.

It boggles the mind to think that Harris felt that her coming of age was the second coming of Obama. I firmly believe that if constitutionally Obama could run again in the future, he would lose his party primaries and lose the presidential election. Finally the third hurdle. America is not the modern progressive nation the world thinks it is. Hilary Clinton, now Harris, lost because American men do not want a woman president.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.