Presidential election resonates
beyond United States shores
Liza Njuguna has been living in the United States since she was 7, but she’s been an American citizen for only five months. Njuguna, 21,was born in the town of Murang’a, in the Central Province of Kenya. She was born into the Kikuyu tribe, and she has always characterized herself first as a Kenyan.
 |
Extended family members of Barack Obama react as election results come in at the family's homestead in Kogelo village, Kenya, Nov. 5. |
But things changed after the recent U.S. presidential election, in which she voted for the first time.
“It was the one time that I felt really proud to be American,” Njuguna said. “The last eight years have definitely made me really self-conscious of the fact that I do live in the U.S., when a lot of people around the world are not necessarily proud of what America has become.”
Njuguna was studying alone when she found out about Barack Obama’s victory. She says she ran across the campus of Washington and Lee University, where she is a senior, in search of people she could celebrate with.
Her family members who live in Kenya told her stories about people who were dancing and cheering in the streets after hearing the news. Her uncle told her that the Lou tribe, into which Obama’s father was born, sacrificed hundreds of cows to celebrate the victory.
“A lot of people have hope that change will actually happen,” Njuguna said. “I think that’s why people were celebrating, because they wanted something more positive to come out of [the elections].” In honor of Obama, the president of Kenya declared Nov. 6 a national holiday.
The Nov. 4 presidential election wasn’t of concern only to Americans. International polls showed populations in only a few nations, including Israel, Georgia and the Philippines hoping for a victory for Sen. John McCain. Worldwide, people cheered for the president-elect in spontaneous street demonstrations.
“It is definitely a little weird,” said Washington & Lee Visiting Instructor Claudia Smolinski. “But a lot of people think [America] is still the country where everything can come true.”
Smolinski is visiting from Germany, a country that Obama traveled to in the summer. She says Germans have developed a crush on the new president-elect ever since he spoke to hundreds of thousands of people in Berlin.
“It was just always, ‘Obama, Obama, Obama,’” Smolinski said. “But then I think it’s also just because he’s a Democrat, and people in Germany associate Republicans with [President] Bush, and they just really wanted something else.”
Smolinski believes that this year’s elections also owe their popularity with the international community to the issues tackled in the campaign.
“Whatever happens in America affects the rest of the world,” she said. “For Germans, the Iraq war is the most important thing because we really disagreed with the decision that the U.S. made at that time.”
Obama’s firm stance on the war in Iraq sparked a lot of global support.
“First of all, people would like to stop the war,” Washington & Lee student Malek Abu Alhaj said. “People don’t actually understand that the war in Iraq actually affects everyone in the Middle East.”
Abu Alhaj is a citizen of Jordan, a Middle Eastern country that fosters friendly relations with the United States. He says the war in Iraq has raised oil prices in his home country, and has brought about a tidal wave of Iraqi refugees. Abu Alhaj believes people in Jordan saw McCain as just another George Bush, which to them was a guarantee for another eight years of bad politics in the Middle East.
“They didn’t even try to like him,” he said.
Smolinski believes the international community is projecting too much hope on Obama.
“If Obama doesn’t change the world within the first couple of months of his presidency, I think he’s going to have a hard time,” she said.
But Njuguna remains optimistic about the future of the United States under Obama. She says it was Obama’s policies that mostly resonated with her, and not the fact that he was a Democrat or that his father was from Kenya.
Click on the images to view each international perspective on the presidential election.
Liza Njuguna, Kenya
Claudia Smolinski, Germany
Malek Abu Alhaj, Jordan
Produced by
Washington and Lee
journalism students.
Lead Supervisors:
Prof. Brian
Richardson
Prof. Indira Somani
Editing supervisor:
Prof. Doug
Cumming
Technical supervisor: Michael Todd