Around the World, Praise for Obama

Around the World, Praise for Obama

By Kevin Sullivan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, November 5, 2008; 10:45 AM

LONDON, Nov. 5 -- Through tears and whoops of joy, in celebrations that spilled onto streets on distant continents, people around the globe called Barack Obama's election a victory for the world and a renewal of America's ability to inspire.

By electing a youthful African American with chestnut-colored skin, the United States has chosen a man whose face seems familiar and comforting in most of the world.

From Paris to New Delhi to the beaches of Brazil, revelers said Obama's election made them feel more connected to America, and that America, after years of strained relations, seemed suddenly more connected to the world.

"As a black British woman, I can't believe that America has voted in a black president," said Jackie Humphries, 49, a librarian who partied with 1,500 people at the U.S. Embassy in London Tuesday night.

"It makes me feel like there is a future that includes all of us," she said, wrapping her arm around a life-size cardboard likeness of the new U.S. president-elect.

"Americans overcame the racial divide and elected Obama because they wanted the real thing: a candidate who spoke from the bottom of his heart," said Terumi Hino, a photographer and painter in Tokyo. "I think this means the United States can go back to being admired as the country of dreams."

Kenya, where Obama's father was raised as a goat-herder, declared Thursday a national holiday, and people danced in the streets wrapped in the American flag in Obama's ancestral village of Kogelo.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela, the civil rights icon who helped bring down his country's apartheid regime, released a letter to Obama that said, "Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place."

Desmond Tutu, another iconic anti-apartheid leader and the retired Anglican archbishop of Cape Town, said Obama's victory tells "people of color that for them, the sky is the limit."

"We have a new spring in our walk and our shoulders are straighter," Tutu said, echoing a commonly held sentiment across the continent.

The world sees Obama as more than a racial standard-bearer, of course, and many praised Obama for his policies on everything from Iraq to health care, which are known to the world in remarkable detail.

Even in the more distant corners of the globe, large audiences followed the presidential election as never before, and television viewers and radio listeners worldwide heard Obama's acceptance speech and the concession by Republican Sen. John McCain.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown congratulated Obama for "energizing politics with his progressive values and his vision for the future."

Amadou Toure, the president of the West African nation of Mali, told French radio, "The United States has given a lesson, a lesson in maturity and a lesson in democracy. The essential considerations that prevailed were really the considerations of a man who had a program."

In China some people interviewed worried about Obama's positions on the delicate issues of Tibet and Taiwan. Some Indians and Egyptians said they had questions about Obama's views on Pakistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev congratulated Obama and said he hoped the two would have a constructive dialogue -- even as he reminded in a separate speech that issues such as the financial crisis and the recent war in Georgia have strained the relationship.

Many people, in dozens of interviews around the world Tuesday night and Wednesday, also said they understood that any new president could not immediately change the United States or the world.

But many said Obama's election was a powerful signal that the United States intended to change direction.

"For the first time I feel the phrase, 'I hereby declare that all men are crated equal,' from the U.S. Declaration of Independence, really came to life for me today," said architect Mamdouh al-Sobaihi, a guest at a post-election reception Wednesday in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. "U.S. history has returned to its roots. The forefathers would be very pleased with today's election," he said.

"Today the United States said not 'We want change' but 'We have changed.' America's message to the rest of the world is that we have changed."

Saudi journalist Samir Saadi said that Obama's election means "the U.S. has won the war on terror."

"Given Obama's name, his background, the doubts about his religion, Americans still voted for him and this proved that America is a democracy," he said. "People here are starting to believe in the U.S. again."

For many, Obama's election came with an almost visceral sense of relief that it signaled the beginning of the end for the administration of President Bush, who has become extremely unpopular in much of the world.

A recent BBC poll found that people in all 22 nations the network surveyed preferred Obama by a wide margin to McCain, who was widely identified with Bush and the Republican Party.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a combative foe of Bush, congratulated Obama on his "historic election of a descendant of Africans" and called for "new relations" between the two nations.

In Russia, Ilya Utekhin, an anthropologist at the European University in St. Petersburg, said Obama's election has given the United States "a historic chance for large-scale re-branding of the image of the United States."

"An African American president appears to have more sensitivity to the cross-cultural diversity of the world, and this is a promise of a more creative and flexible foreign policy," he said.

Viktor Yerofeyev, a prominent Russian novelist, said he believed Obama's election marked the start of a new era for the world.

"The choice of an African American president in the United States overturns the whole idea of the stiff and conservative America," Yerofeyev said. "This means that America did wake up. This means that America is again open for free and democratic values. America has once again become a good model to emulate. It has again become a great country."

"It is almost impossible to overstate the impact of this vote on the rest of the world," said Joichi Ito, a globetrotting Internet entrepreneur and prominent blogger who is based in Tokyo.

"The United States looked closed, stupid, xenophobic and aggressive" under Bush," Ito said. "By electing Obama, it looks open, diversity-embracing, humble and intelligent."

"This vote is the best thing that could have happened to restore American influence," Ito said. "By choosing a black man as president, Americans showed the world they are ready for change."

But the overwhelming reaction to Obama's election among those interviewed was not about his policies. It was delight that America had produced, on a grand global scale, inspiring and overdue proof that they could still believe in the American Dream -- something many had come to doubt.

In Brazil, where polls have shown Obama far more popular than McCain, many people compared Obama to Brazil's popular president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a former shoe shiner and union leader.

"Obama is something new, something different," said Elizabeth Soares, a lawyer from Rio de Janeiro. "The way Obama expresses himself, his charisma, the way he speaks, reminds people of a Brazilian and makes them like him more."

"This is a country which has habitually, sometimes irritatingly, regarded itself as young and vibrant, the envy of the world," veteran BBC foreign correspondent John Simpson wrote on the network's Web site. "Often this is merely hype. But there are times when it is entirely true. With Barack Obama's victory, one of these moments has arrived."

David Lammy, a black British member of Parliament who has known Obama for several years, said that "America is a country that has been marked by race."

"Many people in the world recall the 1960s, and children read about segregation and slavery. American has just taken a historic step and moved that story in a tremendous way. Prejudice and discrimination has not won out over character, ideas and vision."

"Now black and white can raise their shoulders high and can turn a page on issues of inequality," he said, marveling at the "amazing image" of a black family living in the White House.

In Germany, Benjamin Becker, 25, who studies English and history in Cologne, flew to Berlin for a party celebrating Obama's victory -- which he said would brighten global perceptions of the United States.

Becker, who spent a year in Atlanta on a Fulbright scholarship, said he had been "saddened" by America's diminished standing in the world in recent years.

"I remember 10 years ago when the United States was my absolute dreamland," Becker said. "Now I still am partial to the U.S., but the Bush years were detrimental for the country. I hope it will be much different now."

Newspaper headlines around the world portrayed Obama's election in soaring language. "One Giant Leap for Mankind," said the Sun newspaper in London, which dumped its usual topless Page 3 girl in favor of a photo of Obama voting. Said the Times of London, which devoted its entire front page to a photo of Obama smiling before an American flag: "The New World."

"Senator Obama's message of hope is not just for America's future, it is also a message of hope for the world as well," said Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

"Barack Obama's remarkable personal story -- allied to his eloquence and his huge political talents -- sends a powerful message of hope to America's friends across the world," said Irish Prime Minister Brian Cowen, who invited Obama to visit Ireland, where he has ancestral roots.

"On this day, we are all reminded of those who struggled for civil rights in America for so many years, as well as all of those who work for justice and peace around the world today," Cowen said. "At a time of immense global challenges, today is a day of hope for the world."

In Afghanistan, where Obama will confront one of his first challenges in office, President Hamid Karzai praised Obama's election as a "great decision."

"I hope that this new administration in the United States of America, and the fact of the massive show of concern for human beings and lack of interest in race and color while electing the president, will go a long way in bringing the same values to the rest of world sooner or later," Karzai said.

In Ukraine, where Obama will confront a region where Russia is playing an increasingly assertive role, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko called Obama's victory "an inspiration for us. That which appeared impossible has become possible."

In India, political representatives of the country's lowest caste, known as Dalits or "untouchables," said they viewed Obama's victory as an example for their own struggle for equal rights.

"This is America's second revolution, and Obama's victory will boost the esteem of the underprivileged social classes and ethnic groups the world over," said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a prominent Dalit author. "India's rigid caste society will come under terrific moral pressure to integrate Dalits even more."

In Iran, strained relations with the United States colored many people's perceptions of Obama's victory.

"If America can do away with its prejudice, maybe they will also stop thinking that all Iranians are terrorists," said Elam Moghaddam, a housewife shopping for shrimp in Tehran. "I hope that Iran and the United States will make diplomatic relations, now that Obama became president."

Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a former Iranian vice president and opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said he feared Obama would be under "lots of pressure" to take a hard line against the Islamic world because of his Muslim roots.

"I hope he won't feel compelled to put more pressure on the Islamic world to compensate the fact that his middle name is Hussein," he said. "I congratulate the American people with this choice."

Praise for the election of an African American also came from an unusual source: Abbas Abdi, one of the organizers of the 1979 hostage-taking of American diplomats at the U.S. Embassy.

"It is hard to imagine that blacks 50 years ago in some states had to sit in the back seats in public transportation," he said. "Now one of them, a member from a minority, is president."

Many in China seemed baffled about the possibility of a black president, largely because they seem to know little about American blacks beyond the official state media's emphasis on stories about U.S. discrimination against them.

"Most of Chinese don't have any contact with black people in their daily life," said Yuan Yue, founder of Horizon Research, which conducted a recent poll that found that among Chinese voters with a preference, Obama was leading McCain 33 percent to 15 percent.

"Many Chinese have good feelings about the U.S. democratic system," he said. "And this result gives Chinese a more direct understanding about American democracy. It sends the message that everyone has a chance. If you raise the right issues, even if you are black, you can win. This is the most attractive part of American democracy."

Still, for some in China the Obama glass remained only half-full.

"Obama is half white, half black, so the progress in the U.S. is not that big," said Hu Jing, 25, a paralegal. "It will take dozens of years to elect a person who is 100 percent black."

Correspondents Edward Cody in Paris, Emily Wax in New Delhi, Blaine Harden in Tokyo, Maureen Fan in Beijing, Mary Jordan in London, Mary Beth Sheridan in Baghdad, Joshua Partlow in Rio de Janeiro, Phil Pan in Moscow and Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran, special correspondents Karla Adam in London, Shannon Smiley in Berlin and Faizah Ambah in Jeddah and researcher Zhang Jie in Beijing contributed to this report.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/05/AR2008110502053.html