WITH CROP OVER 2016 officially over, perhaps Barbadians would also become more focused on the unique political challenge currently facing Americans – the election of a woman as their first-ever President – Hillary Rodham Clinton.
At 68, and hailed by the outgoing first Black American President, Barack Obama as “the most qualified” candidate ever for the presidency of the world’s most powerful nation, Clinton, a former first lady and Secretary of State, is repeatedly favoured in national polls to defeat the billionaire Republican Donald Trump as presidential candidate at the November 8 election.
It so happens, that long before nations in Africa started to respond to then daunting political challenges of the 20th and 21st century, including the election of a woman as head of government or head of state, our small patch of the Caribbean region was already responding to that enlightened course in governance at the end of British colonial rule.
This bit of history, first started in Guyana – where an American-born nursing student, Janet Rosenberg, who was the wife of Dr Cheddi Jagan, subsequently became Guyana’s first elected woman president and head of state – the first within CARICOM.
Amid spreading militancy of the international women rights movement for “equal rights” and mutual respect, it was to evolve as the normal enlightened approach to elect women not only as parliamentarians and appointed cabinet ministers, but as prime ministers and/ or heads of state.
Electing a woman president In contrast, during those pioneering years – when it became the norm for women of Guyana, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Dominica to be elected as prime ministers – citizens of the “great empire”, the US, often proclaimed as “the greatest democracy on earth”, still could not conceive of the non-revolutionary political initiative of electing a woman as head of government or head of state.
In the entire continent of Africa, just Liberia has to date managed to elect a woman President, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2006, while Burundi elected its first woman Prime Minister, Sylvie Kinigi, as early as 1993.
Neighbouring Latin America has the distinction of electing seven women as presidents/heads of state. In our comparatively small corner of the global community, CARICOM states have been coping with challenges of their own to help advance the work agendas of women rights’ organisations.
In the process, CARICOM states succeeded in electing women prime ministers in Jamaica (Portia Simpson-Miller), Trinidad and Tobago (Kamla Persad-Bissessar) and in Dominica (Dame Eugenia Charles).
Currently in Barbados, the parliamentary Opposition Leader, Mia Mottley, is being viewed as likely to lead her Labour Party to victory at next year’s general elections to become the country’s first-ever woman prime minister. Her opponents think this is “simply wishful thinking”. Time will tell.
Meanwhile, in the US, Donald Trump, a first-time presidential candidate, seems to be a poor Republican match against Hillary Clinton, the Democrat’s quite experienced and tough candidate.
Ever so angry and ready to spew venomous barbs in preference for any serious effort to relate to current realities at home and abroad, Mr Trump seems to be heading for what’s increasingly being supported by opinion polls – even in a tight race – defeat for occupancy of The White House by Hillary Clinton.
It, therefore, appears at this stage that following the coming US presidential election, Germany’s mercurial Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and Britain’s recently chosen prime minister, the impressive Theresa May, will soon be joined by the dynamic Hillary Clinton when she becomes the 46th President of the US.
