Security should remain a focal point in the US relations with the Caribbean, regardless of the outcome of today's US presidential election, Dr Indira Rampersad, political science/international relations lecturer, said yesterday.
Rampersad spoke at a panel discussion on the election held by the University of the West Indies (UWI) Department of Behavioural Sciences, in conjunction with the US Embassy. The panellists were Alexander McLaren, public affairs officer at the embassy, Rampersad and Daniel Sturgeon, consular officer at the embassy and a former media analyst and international elections journalist.
The discussion was held at the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute of Social and Economic Sciences (SALISES) Conference Room, St Augustine. Rampersad also said she was disappointed that during the presidential debates that neither of the major candidates, President Barack Obama and former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney, discussed the issue of climate change, which threatens small-island states.
She delivered a presentation, entitled Too Close To Call, which compared the US and T&T?electoral processes. Rampersad also examined some idiosyncrasies inherent only to the US system and highlighted the swing/battleground states critical to today's election. Rampersad identified ten states, among them Ohio, New Hampshire, Florida (critical in the George Bush/Al Gore presidential race), Nevada and Wisconsin.
She said Ohio was to the US what Tunapuna is to T&T, since often the party that wins Tunapuna wins the election and the pattern is similarly observed in the US. Rampersad identified the US economy, energy, health care and foreign policy as four salient issues in the presidential elections. She said both candidates had plans to wean the US off foreign oil and gas imports and that would affect the T&T economy. President Obama, she said, planned to spend US$90 billion on creating green jobs.
Rampersad said Latin America and the Caribbean were ignored by Obama's foreign policy. She said US?policy on HIV/Aids, security, immigration and natural disasters was important to the Caribbean. She said the issue of security with regard to drug-trafficking needed to be addressed, as well as climate change. "We should continue collaboration on the issue of security despite who becomes the president," she said.
Countries, such as T&T and the US, were already feeling the effects of climate change through increased flooding, she said. Rampersad said one country could not address the issue of climate change on its own and needed the assistance of the US as the current superpower. Sturgeon gave an outline of the US electoral process.
He said: "Tomorrow is only a step in a longer process which began last January with the primary elections to determine who the candidates will be. Tomorrow is going to be a very important decision made by the American people." Sturgeon said there were more than two candidates contesting the election and 51 separate elections would be held today.
He presented a ballot from Orange County, Florida, which he used to show the 12 candidates contesting the presidential election, one of whom is comedian Roseanne Barr. He explained that the election in the US was not won through the popular vote but rather through the electoral vote, in which the winner of a given state needs 270 electoral votes out of 538 to win.
He used the example of the 2000 presidential election between Al Gore and George Bush, in which Gore received a larger percentage of the popular vote but Bush gained a greater percentage of the electoral vote. After today's election, McLaren said, there is a three-step process to put a new team together. He said the President chooses his team, then there is a process of vetting and then confirmation, all of which could take up to a year.
