PRIME MINISTER Liz Truss has resigned as British Prime Minister and the ruling Conservative Party is racing to replace her. However, the competition did not take place. There was no vote among party members on electing a new leader; There was no vote among Conservative Party MPs to elect their new leader.

This is how Mr. Sunak became Prime Minister. For the contest to take place, each candidate needed to obtain 100 signatures from Conservative MPs. The party decided that MPs would choose the next leader, not the general membership.
Sunak alone collected 100 signatures and became Prime Minister. Shouldn’t there be a simple democratic process where people throw their hats in the ring and face the vote of their party members?
What a fascinating, exciting, even interesting Prime Minister Mr. Sunak was. Instead of being elected Prime Minister, he faced a general election two years after being elected. His party was devastated in the election.

Across the ocean, President Biden announced he will not run again. Rather than holding a primary in which candidates would compete against each other, Ms. Harris was nominated by a small group led by Ms. Nancy Pelosi, the most influential figure in the Democratic Party.
Shouldn’t there be a democratic process that allows candidates to participate in primaries? It is highly likely that there were voices within the Democratic Party calling for primaries, but they were suppressed. It is quite possible that Harris will lose in the primary and another candidate who can beat Trump will emerge.

The point to be emphasized here is that the democracy and freedom of choice that the West imposed on us after its independence are not implemented in these countries. Mr Sunak became Prime Minister without meeting his own party’s voters. In the United States, Ms. Harris was anointed by her party rather than facing a primary. I believe Ms. Harris will lose the primary.

But the Democratic Party was focused on Trump, who they deeply believed was so unelectable that any Democratic candidate could beat him. What everyone living in the post-colonial world should think about is that the Democratic Party lost the 2024 presidential election because the Democratic Party did not use the democratic method in choosing its presidential candidate.

That’s why I think another candidate would do better. Harris faced three insurmountable obstacles. First, Biden was unpopular and Americans wanted him gone. Second, as a byproduct of this, any candidate seen as close to Biden will be categorized as Biden is. Ms. Harris wore her Biden pin on her shirt sleeve.

Not only did he tell the hosts of The View that he wouldn’t do anything different than Biden, but he also added that he’s been a part of every major decision the Biden Administration makes. Why did Harris make two such incredible mistakes?
Because he felt that: A – he could beat Trump anyway, so he wouldn’t have to act diplomatically or strategically; B- Ms. Harris romanticized the past during the election campaign. He breathed the nostalgia of the Obama era and believed that the aura and emotions created by the Obama campaign would also be present in his own campaign.

Ms. Harris was an extremely poor policy analyst. Mr. Obama boasted after Trump defeated Mrs. Clinton in 2016 that he would win if he ran again. This was a lavish boast. Mr. Obama lost votes in his re-election bid. In reelection results, during his presidency, the incumbent Democratic Party suffered its largest losses in the governorship, House of Representatives, and Senate of any Democratic president.

By the time he was re-elected, Mr. Obama’s star was waning. Americans from all walks of life and color wanted Obama to win. They believed it was time for an African American to become president. As Mr. Obama approached the end of his term, he lost unlimited support not only in the USA but also in the world. It was hoped that there would be a different president who would transform the United States. But this did not happen. By 2016, Americans accepted that the Obama experiment did not work.

It’s mind-boggling that Harris thinks her coming of age is the second coming of Obama. I firmly believe that if Obama were to run for constitutional reelection in the future, he would lose the party primaries and lose the presidential election. Finally the third obstacle. America is not the modern, progressive nation the world thinks it is. Hilary Clinton, now Harris, lost because American men do not want a female president.

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