The President-elect of the United States of America (USA), Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will be sworn in
today as the 46th president of the country, alongside his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris. Harris is the first woman and woman of colour to serve as US Vice-President. At age 78, Biden will become the oldest president in US history.
Born on November 20, 1942, Biden was declared the president-elect of the U.S. on November 7, 2020, following an initially tight electoral college contest against incumbent President Donald Trump and four days of vote-counting. The campaigns leading up to the election were individuated by mudslinging as the results were vigorously contested in court by Trump. Biden’s victory makes him the first former vice president to win the Oval Office since George H. W. Bush, who won in 1988 after eight years under Ronald Reagan.
In an election carried out during a pandemic, as well as a national reckoning over racial injustice, Biden won over 74 million popular votes — the most in U.S. presidential election history. On December 14, 2020, the Electoral College cast a majority of votes for him, formalising the presidential election in the manner set out in the constitution.
Before his run for the nation’s highest office. Biden served 36 years as a U.S. Senator from Delaware, a small Mid-Atlantic state, and went on to rule as vice president of the United States with former President Barack Obama. As a two-term vice president, Biden focused largely on economic and foreign policy issues. The foregoing is an indication of his preparedness to occupy the most exalted and dominant seat in the world.
We warmly congratulate the president-elect on his victory and commend him for his composure in the face of provocation by Trump. As he takes his oath of office, he will surely be faced with enormous pressures to implement a laundry list of priorities on a range of issues from foreign policy to the climate crisis, reversing many of the stark changes implemented by his predecessor.
As a first step, Biden must unite and heal America, now a deeply divided country. Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud prove that to heal the country, Biden must be clear about what is dividing Americans and that is racism. He has to do away with racial anxieties often rooted in status and privilege. He should desist from building his policies on how it may assuage or enflame a particular race.
The Coronavirus pandemic is another sensitive area to be pushed forward. With over 23.9 million cases and about 397,000 deaths, Biden will have so much in his hands. Upon his inauguration, he should get his Covid-19 team to hit the ground running immediately. A new nationwide plan needs to be rolled out against the pandemic while measures to fix the disastrous economic fallout should be determined. The team could put together a serious public information campaign which has been missing.
With the outcome of the election and his assumption of office finally set in stone, Biden can now turn his attention to pandemic-ravaged U.S. economy that has caused widespread devastation to the livelihoods of millions. The U.S. economy, crippled by the global health crisis, has since shown strong signs of slump. A grave point of entanglement where attention is needed is the humongous number of Americans that are jobless, struggling to make ends meet.
During his campaign, the former vice president promised voters what he would do if elected president. These include re-entering the Paris Climate Agreement, returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to limit its nuclear activities in return for the lifting of harsh economic sanctions, restoring U.S. membership of the World Health Organisation (WHO), and reversal of travel ban for travellers from Muslim countries. There are strong global expectations that the new U.S. leader would fulfill these promises.
After four years of what many view as President Trump’s irrationally abrasive treatment of key U.S. allies, an instant improvement in the atmospherics between Washington and the international community under a Biden administration can be anticipated. That matters in a bilateral relationship that is ever more important as an anchor for the broader partnership between the United States and other countries. It is believed that Biden’s foreign policy credentials, institutionalist track record, and the promise of a return to a more multilateral approach in U.S. policy will create much goodwill for America.
As Biden confronts enormous challenges, we urge him to reverse the four years of Trump’s administration that was largely delineated by disdain, disinterest and derision towards Africa. The change of guard in the White House today is expected to herald a shift towards the African continent, which has always yearned for a prime spot on a crowded U.S. foreign policy agenda.
Most African countries are prepared for a U.S. administration that treats Africa with civility, certainty, dignity and respect. Africa is looking forward to Biden to intervene in the precipitous decline in democratic governance across the continent in the last few years, ease the travel ban on African countries including Nigeria, continue U.S. engagement on African security issues, particularly anti-terrorism campaigns, and renew Africa/U.S. relations in the critical domain of trade and investment, among others.
The president-elect must be equally lauded for appointing some women of colour into his cabinet. This way, he has opened up his cabinet to all without prejudice. Biden’s appointment of two Nigerian-born women, Adewale Adeyemo, as the deputy treasury secretary and Funmi Olorunnipa Badejo, as one of his legal advisers at the White House, is indeed instructive. It portends his willingness to work with anyone regardless of colour or race.
The role of the judiciary in the handling of Trump’s election lawsuits is worthy of emulation. Judges appointed by Republicans and Trump himself became singularly uncooperative conspirators in the assault unleashed by the president. The judges have shown their devotion to judicial principle and constitutional fidelity. This is food for thought for Nigerian judges who would do the bidding of their appointors in similar circumstances.
Also, the certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory by the federal lawmakers in defiance of violent attempts to discombobulate the process by Trump and his mob is especially notable. We extol the lawmakers for affirming their independence and loyalty to the constitution when they ate away Trump’s moves to halt the peaceful transfer of power by staging a violent insurrection inside the U.S. Capitol.
As Trump vacates the White House today, rather reluctantly, with an awfully low approval rating of 29%, the 74 million Americans who voted for him, the pro-Trump alliance, the ultra-right Trumpers that he inebriated with the oxygen of hate, the anarchists who bought into his politics of deception meant to de-legitimize Biden’s victory, that is, those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, may be pained that their era is over, at least for now. But for the rest of the world, Trump’s exit is a big relief, the end of horror and a terrible nightmare.