Obama, do the Mandela Walk, not the Batik Walk! Mandela’s walk from prison straight to government house is powerful symbolism of an epic Life’s struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph over an environment of corruption and oppression.

In contrast the latter, whilst promoting our local Batik industy worldwide would only make richer politically connected cronies who control it !

Credit goes to the average American voter & Media. They make Obama’s political ascendency possible. Whether Obama could achieve much remains to be seen. What is important is that he made it. This is because of what he represents: hope for change.

Everywhere, we’re confronted with examples of the powerful and corrupt few (whether persons or nations) oppressing the multitudes. Everywhere people placed in power focus on their self interest and ignore the interest of those who placed them in power.

Yah, people can still vote but they’re disenfranchised. They can voice their opinions but they have to be guarded in what they voice or be silenced. There is freedom of speech but not often freedom after speech.

In many countries, the racial, religious and crony capitalistic policies of governments prick the conscience of all men of good will and arouse their deepest indignation but yet they could do nothing to change what appears the Human Condition ever since the first sin committed by Adam & Eve kicked out of the Garden of Eden!

There is therefore a universal yearning for change – change from this Human Condition (the humdrum & routine) where multitudes are powerless against oppression, deceit of power whether governmental or corporate), racial and religious bigotry. It is an idea whose time has come.

Of course Khairy ‘s greatest obstacle : Malaysian electorate are no American electorate; equal opportunity to recruit the brightest and the best amongst all is not the motto here – and change and solution to eradicate systemic corruption is not by way of more democratic, liberal and inclusive policies of accountability and transparent (secular) governance but more inward looking and exclusive religious/theocractic policies of chopping the hands of those who steal in Merdeka Square. :)

When Hitler’s empire collapsed, we know western forces and Red army grabbed territories in Europe that become western Europe and Eastern Europe under the expanded Soveit Union. It precipitated the Cold War in which both sides had nuclear capabilities.

Cuban Missile Crisis was due USSR Khruschev/Kremlin installing building up missiles in satellite Cuba that American reconnaisance planes identified.

The missiles were directed at vthe US. Do we expect JFK not to act?

Khruschev wanted to bully young JFK to see if he had the mettle to stand up against this provocation.

Yet JFK acted with restraint. He could have ordered a first morning strike against Cuban missiles. That would have killed civilian innocents. It would be reminicent of the Japanese sneak attack in wee hours of Peral Harbour. So JFK ordered a naval blockade, so that Soviet frigates bringing missile parts could not effected delivery. Khruschev backed off. Conflict was averted, and Khruschev’s bullying tactics neutralised.

These are historical facts : JFK did right.

However we’re not sure about Vietnam. It was same mould of thinking – that Communist China like Soviet Union (two monolithic Communist giants out to expand geopolitical influence using proxies), in the case of Mao’s China using Vietnam to expamnd Communism to rest of South East Asia. So it is true JFK was the first to send American combatants in under disguise of “advisers” though it was Lydon Johnson and Nixon who escalated the war in Vietnam.

Bush War on Terror after 9/11 is upon same premise : take the war to source from which your enemies get inspiration to attack you. If you don’t, in the name of Peace, you’ll get no Peace because whilst you sleep/rest, they are encouraged to plan and prepare to attack you.

So where does one draw the line who is the war monger or peace monger when pursuit of peace sometimes requires the prosecution of war?

Farish urges Obama to do the Mandela walk.

Comparing them, they have similarities. They are both embodiments of hope : that if political change can happen when persons like Mandela or Obama could, against and beating all odds, achieve the highest office of government, so political change to improve ordinary people’s lives vis-a-vis government can likewise happen if the right leader with strong moral leadership and vision could, through democratic participatory process, be screened, found and elected to position.

There are however two limtations in that comparison.

The first difference is that Mandela’s leadership is proven : apatheid in South Africa was dismantled by sheer moral force of sacrifice and struggle; Obama’s is still at the rhethoric level of campaign, awaiting his exeercise of powers of office.

The second difference is in who and whose interests they represent respectively.

Mandela represented a nation of disenfranchised oppressed black and poor by majority.

In contrast, Obama was elected to high office to lead an imperial nation dubbed the only remaining superpower.

Obama therefore faces the challenge – that Mandela did not have to grapple – of having by actions to balance moral principles against national interest of an imperial power that has geo-political interest all around the world.

Even in the Middle East Obama has to draw the line and distinguish between withdrawing troops in Iraq and putting in more troops in Afghanistan; how to secure Israelis right to live in peace as against Palestinian right to self determination and Hama’s recalcitrance and intransigence.

Even whilst he has to reconstruct US’s sullied image as world’s bully and buttress US’s leadership of the world, he has to tread carefully so as to not overstep, in that process, and be accused of imposing Pax Americana on the world enforced by whether weapons of war or the Greenback…

Obama then will find doing the Mandela walk that more difficult having regard to the national “imperial” interests that he represents.