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Americans will choose whom?

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury - 4/29/2008

The entire world is closely monitoring the pre-election battle between Democrats and republicans. US media too are busy in either predicting the potential winner or analyzing policies of the candidates. It will be surely difficult at this moment to give a clear anticipation on who will finally enter the White house after the election on November 4. Several international news media are continuing to publish their own predictions or polls on a regular basis. In Bangladesh, the only newspaper, having wide global and local readership, Weekly Blitz [online edition available on www.weeklyblitz.net] is also continuing several analytical reports on the American presidential election 2008. But, let us also have a glimpse over the reports, analysis and forecasts by other influential media in the world on the potential winner in the most important election in the world.



United States is world’s number one power and there is no doubt that US president is the most powerful figure in global politics. Considering these facts, it is important for all to understand the electoral battle ground for making even a self assessment on the possible result in the election.



According to America’s one of the most influential television network, Sky News, Hillary Clinton has said Barack Obama would beat John McCain in this year's race for the White House in the latest televised tussle between the Democratic rivals. The admission seems to undermine her private suggestions to superdelegates that the junior senator from Illinois would lead the party to defeat in November's general election.



The 90-minute debate was mostly cordial, although punctuated by moments of tetchiness. The candidates dealt with subjects ranging from the war in Iraq to well-publicised mis-steps on the campaign trail.



Senator Clinton apologised for claiming she landed under sniper fire on a trip to Bosnia in 1996.

"I may be a lot of things, but I am not dumb," she said.



"I wrote about it in my book in 2004. I said some things that weren't in keeping with what I knew to be the case. I am embarrassed. I'm sorry I said it."



Senator Obama also distanced himself from controversial remarks made by his former pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and later appeared to stumble on his voting record over handguns in Illinois and, under sustained questioning from moderator Charles Gibson, struggled to clarify his tax plans.



Another influential US television network, ABC news questioned, can McCain win over women voters? Marcus Baram in ABC news said, “He's perceived as a moderate Republican, his position on abortion has been more flexible than that of President Bush and he's surrounded by powerful women in his family.



Does Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., have the ability to attract women voters back to the Republican Party -- even if he ends up running against Hillary Clinton, the first female presidential nominee? Or will the gender gap continue?

Women have been more likely than men to vote for Democratic presidential candidates in every election since 1980. McCain trails the New York senator and her Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois among female voters in the most recent polls.



And last week, he came under fire from some women's groups for skipping a vote on equal pay legislation supported by Clinton and Obama.



"Someone should tell McCain and the Senate Republican leadership that before the 2007 Supreme Court decision, this bill was the law of the land protecting women, people of color, older and disabled workers from wage discrimination," said Eleanor Smeal of the Feminist Majority.”



McCain told reporters that he "would have opposed the bill since it could contribute to frivolous lawsuits harmful to business."



Yet equal pay has rarely been a high-priority issue in presidential elections and McCain's position is not likely to upset women voters, explains Ruth Mandel, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.



"Equal pay has never been high on the agenda," she said. "Look at the debates. How many times did equal pay come up as a question? Not once."



Although McCain now claims that he's strongly anti-abortion -- polls have shown most women support abortion rights -- his position on the issue was more nuanced in the past.



"But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support [a] repeal of Roe v. Wade," he told the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco in 1999.



McCain has the tentative support of the Republican Majority for Choice despite the fact that the group only endorses Republicans who support abortion rights.



There are bunch of critical stories on three of the candidates in American and global media. Recently, one of the American newspapers, Seattle Post Intelligencer, guest writer Tom Hayden wrote, “"My wife Barbara has begun yelling at the television set every time she hears Hillary Clinton. This is abnormal behavior, since Barbara is a meditative practitioner of everything peaceful and organic, and is inspired by Barack Obama's transformational appeal.



For Barbara, Hillary has become the screech on the blackboard. From first lady to Lady Macbeth.



It's getting to me as well. Last year, I was somewhat reconciled to the prospect of supporting and pressuring Hillary as the nominee amid the rising tide of my friends who already hated her, irrationally I thought. I was one of those people Barack accuses of being willing to settle. I even had framed a flattering autographed message from Hillary. But as the campaign has gone on and on, her signed portrait still leans against the wall in my study. I don't know where she belongs anymore.



At least Hillary was a known quantity in my life. I knew of the danger of her becoming more and more hawkish as she tried to break the ultimate glass ceiling. I also knew she could be forced to change course if public opinion was fiercely opposed to the war. And I knew she was familiar with radical social causes from her own life experience in the '60. So my progressive task seemed clear: help build an antiwar force powerful enough to make it politically necessary to end the war. Been there, done that. And in the process, finally put a woman in the White House. A soothing bonus.



But as the Obama campaign gained momentum, Hillary began morphing into the persona that has my pacifist wife screaming at the television set.



Going negative doesn't begin to describe what has happened. Hillary is going over the edge. Even worse are the flacks she sends before the cameras on her behalf, like that Kiki person, who smirks and shakes her head at the camera every time she fields a question. Or the real carnivores, like Howard Wolfson, Lanny Davis and James Carville, whose sneering smugness prevents countless women like my wife from considering Hillary at all.



To use the current terminology, Hillary people are bitter people, even more bitter than the white working-class voters Barack has talked about. Because they circle the wagons so tightly, they don't recognize how identical, self-reinforcing and out-of-touch they are.



To take just one example, the imagined association between Barack Obama and Bill Ayers will suffice. Hillary is blind to her own roots in the '60s. In one college speech she spoke of ecstatic transcendence; in another, she said, "Our social indictment has broadened. Where once we exposed the quality of life in the world of the South and the ghettos, now we condemn the quality of work in factories and corporations. Where once we assaulted the exploitation of man, now we decry the destruction of nature as well. How much long can we let corporations run us?"



She was in Chicago for three nights during the 1968 street confrontations. She chaired the 1970 Yale Law School meeting where students voted to join a national student strike again an "unconscionable expansion of a war that should never have been waged." She was involved in the New Haven defense of Bobby Seale during his murder trial in 1970, as the lead scheduler of student monitors. She surely agreed with Yale president Kingman Brewster that a black revolutionary couldn't get a fair trial in America. She wrote that abused children were citizens with the same rights as their parents.



Most significant in terms of her recent attacks on Barack, after Yale law school, Hillary went to work for the left-wing Bay Area law firm of Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, which specialized in Black Panthers and West Coast labor leaders prosecuted for being communists. Two of the firm's partners, according to Treuhaft, were communists and the two others "tolerated communists." Then she went on to Washington to help impeach Richard Nixon, whose career was built on smearing and destroying the careers of people through vague insinuations about their backgrounds and associates. (All these citations can be found in Carl Bernstein's sympathetic 2007 Clinton biography, "A Woman in Charge.")



All these were honorable words and associations in my mind, but doesn't she see how the Hillary of today would accuse the Hillary of the '60s of associating with black revolutionaries who fought gun battles with police officers, and defending pro-communist lawyers who backed communists? Doesn't the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whom Hillary attacks today, represent the very essence of the black radicals Hillary was associating with in those days? And isn't the Hillary of today becoming the same kind of guilt-by-association insinuator as the Richard Nixon she worked to impeach?



It is as if Hillary Clinton is engaged in a toxic transmission onto Barack Obama of every outrageous insult and accusation ever inflicted on her by the American right over the decades. She is running against what she might have become. Too much politics dries the soul of the idealist.



It is abundantly clear that the Clintons, working with FOX News and manipulating old Clinton staffers like George Stephanopoulos, are trying, at least unconsciously, to so damage Barack Obama that he will be perceived as "unelectable" to Democratic super delegates. It is also clear that the campaign of defamation against Obama has resulted in higher negative ratings for Hillary Clinton. She therefore is threatening the Democratic Party's chances for the White House, whether or not she is the nominee.



Since no one in the party leadership seems able or willing to intervene against this self-destructive downward spiral, perhaps progressives need to consider responding in the only way politicians sometimes understand. If they can't hear us screaming at the television sets, we can send a message that the Clintons are acting as if they prefer John McCain to Barack Obama. And follow it up with another message: If Clinton doesn't immediately cease her path of destruction, millions of young voters and black voters may not send checks, may not knock on doors, and may not even vote for her if she becomes the nominee. That's not a threat, that's the reality she is creating.”



The global media talks about McCain’s age, Obama's skin color and Hillary being a woman. Shouldn't elections be about what a candidate has done and what they plan on doing? But, according to political pundits, there are three things that any true American should consider when voting for a candidate - Trust, Respect and Honor. Who can you trust to do what is good for you, your family and your country?



Who can you respect enough to be proud to have them as the
leader of the free world? Who has the honor of standing up for America and Americas and putting them first and foremost? Voting for president this year doesn't have to be as hard as most people are making it, it just requires a little common sense on your part.



Eminet columnist Debbie Schlussel broke a story on January 30, on Senator Barack Obama’s close ties with the Nation of Islam (NOI), headed by black racist and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan.


Schlussel interviewed a former Obama insider on the condition of anonymity and learned that contrary to Obama’s recent statements distancing himself from Farrakhan and his anti-Jewish views, the Senator actually has staff members who are NOI members.



According to Schlussel, “… a former Obama insider says that Obama’s sudden aversion to NOI and Farrakhan is belied by the fact that Obama employed and continues to employ several Farrakhan acolytes in high positions on his Illinois and U.S. Senate campaign and office staffs.”



One of those NOI members is Cynthia K. Miller, who served as Treasurer of his Senate campaign. Another NOI member is Jennifer Mason who currently serves as Obama’s Director of Constituent Services and who oversees the hiring of interns for Obama.



The insider also told Schlussel that Obama’s Illinois State Senate district consisted of prime Nation of Islam territory, including Hyde Park where Farrakhan’s mansion is located. According to Illinois politicos, no one can win that district without the blessing of Farrakhan.



Obama’s relationship with recently arrested Tony Rezko is problematic. Rezko is a Syrian Arab who helped Obama purchases his home. In addition, Rezko was in partnership with NOI founder Elijah Muhammad’s son, Jabir.



Sen. Obama’s pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright has been in the news recently over his anti-Israel statements and his recent awarding of a lifetime achievement award to his friend, Louis Farrakhan. The racist head of the Nation of Islam has referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion” and said that whites are only “potential” humans.



Obama issued a statement distancing himself from some of Wright’s anti-Semite comments but his employment of NOI members raises questions about his own religious beliefs and views about Israel.



“This newest revelation about Obama’s close ties to the Nation of Islam raises serious questions about his own faith and his views on whites, Israel and our nation’s war against Islamic fascism,” said TVC Chairman Rev. Louis P. Sheldon. “Just how many Nation of Islam racists will fill an Obama Administration should he become President of the United States?”



The Nation of Islam is a radical anti-white, anti-Jewish organization, founded by Elijah Muhammad.



On December last year, At a stop at Smoky Row Coffee Shop in Oskaloosa, Obama sat down to eat some pumpkin pie with four local women and ended up having to explain how he was not a Muslim.


An older woman seated at the table asked Obama to explain his Muslim heritage, to which the candidate replied, "This is something that keeps on being misreported, so I’m glad you asked me."


Obama was referring to an e-mail chain accusing him of being a Muslim with an intent to undermine the United States. Early this year, false reports also circulated that he had attended a madrassa as a child. Obama explained his connection to Islam in this way:


"My father was from Kenya,” he said, “and a lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn’t practice Islam. Truth is he wasn’t very religious. He met my mother. My mother was a Christian from Kansas, and they married and then divorced. I was raised by my mother. So, I’ve always been a Christian. The only connection I’ve had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father’s side came from that country. But I’ve never practiced Islam."

More: "For a while, I lived in Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that’s a Muslim country. And I went to school. But I didn’t practice. But what I do think it does is it gives me insight into how these folks think, and part of how I think we can create a better relationship with the Middle East and that would help make us safer is if we can understand how they think about issues."



Here is one question. As Mr. Obama confessed that his father was a non practicing Muslim, and he too did not ‘practice’ Islam during his stay in Indonesia, can this be treated as he is not a Muslim. There thousands of Muslims in the world, who are non-practicing. But that does not mean that they are not Muslims. In Bangladesh too, there are hundreds of non-practicing Muslim, but all of them are anti-Semitic and anti-Christianity. On the other hand, according to Qur’an, a Muslim man can marry a Jewish or Christian woman without converting her to religion. But, the child gets father’s religion.



In January 2008, American writer Jon Christian Ryter wrote, “In 1991 a young Muslim Harvard Law College graduate named Barack Hussein Obama (who has denied his Islamic past and Muslim roots for as long as he has been a public figure) became a civil rights community activist working out of the Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama worked as a community organizer for Trinity in poor black neighborhoods. Trinity's senior pastor Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr, a black racist, who preached radical Afrocentric theology and didn't mind delivering profanity-spiked sermons found a congregation-builder in Obama. Because of what Wright called Obama's multiple-faith background and his Harvard education, he was a natural community-builder.



When Obama broke onto the national political scene in 2004, not only did he attempt to erase all traces his Islamic childhood, but he also tried to erase the nature of his relationship with Dr. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr, the pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ. (When your country is at war with Islamic extremists being a Muslim is not the shortest route to the White House.) Obama has told the media his reason for shielding his pastor was because "...he respected Mr. Wright's work for the poor and his fight against injustice." In reality Dr. Wright's work was to denounce the United States as a white racist nation. That's not good press for an African American candidate who needs to win a majority of the white vote to win the office of President.



It would have been not only natural, but expected, for Barack Obama—when he decided to run for the presidency—to make the announcement from the pulpit of the 8,500 member Trinity United Church of Christ. Obama would later state he did not in order to shield his pastor from the spotlight of the media. Dr. Wright has never shunned positive publicity. It was obvious to the media—in particular the New York Times which noted in an April 20, 2007 article that Obama was very deliberately distancing himself from Jeremiah Wright. Instead, Obama announced his candidacy on the steps of the old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois—where Abraham Lincoln announced his candidacy—on Feb. 10, 2007. Obama sees himself as an archtype of Lincoln who will "free his people from the tyranny of the oppressor." What people are those? The inner city people of color whom Dr. Wright believes are part of the Black Value System? Or does he see himself as the man who will free the Muslim world from the Great Satan since his first action, he says, as President of the United States will be to pull all Americans troops out of the Middle East? The voters need to figure out exactly who Barack Obama's constituents really are because when I add 2 + 2 + Obama, it doesn't come out four.



When Obama's early history and his Islamic upbringing was first reported, Obama's website posted a statement dated Nov. 12, 2007 with the headline: "Barack Obama is Not and Has Never Been a Muslim." The statement reiterated that Obama was not a Muslim, was not raised as a Muslim, and is a committed Christian.



On Dec. 22 at the Smoky Row Coffee Shop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, the locals asked Obama about his Muslim roots. He said: "My father was from Kenya. A lot of people in his village were Muslim. He didn't practice Islam. Truth is, he wasn't very religious." That was a lie. Obama's father and stepfather were devout Islamics. Both faithfully practiced their religion. His stepfather, who had a much greater impact on Obama's upbringing, was a radical Wahabbi Muslim. "My mother was a Christian from Kansas." That was also a lie. Obama's mother, his material grandmother and grandfather were all atheists. "They married and then divorced. I was raised by my mother. So, I've always been a Christian. The only connection I've had to Islam is that my grandfather on my father's side came from that country. But I've never practiced Islam...For a while I lived in Indonesia because my mother was teaching there. And that's a Muslim country. And I went to school—but I didn't practice Islam." Another lie. Obama's mother married Lolo Soetoro, a Wahabbi extremist who lived in Indonesia. When Obama's mother moved to Indonesia—before she married her second Muslim husband—she enrolled her son in Francis Assisis Catholic School. He was enrolled as a Muslim because he was a Muslim. The enrollment form required each student to choose one of five state-sanctioned religions when enrolling: Buddhist, Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, or Protestant. Had he been a lifelong Christian, or even a recent convert, he—or his mother—would have circled Protestant.



When confronted with this information, Obama said he couldn't understand how such an error could have happened. Los Angeles Times reporter Paul Watson, who dug into Obama's allegation of error, said "...his former Roman Catholic and Muslim teachers, along with two people who were identified by Obama's grade school teacher as childhood friends, says Obama was registered by his family as a Muslim at both schools he attended. The registration meant that during the third and fourth grades, Obama learned about Islam for two hours each week in religion classes. The childhood friends say Obama sometimes went to Friday prayers at the local mosque." (Something else Obama claims he never did.) "...Obama's younger sister, Maya Soetoro, said in a statement released by the campaign that the family attended the mosque only 'for big communal events' not every Friday." Obama, who belongs to a church that teaches that the Muslims of the world were wronged by both Israel and the United States, cannot afford to be labeled as a "Muslim" by voters who expect the United States to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan where their sons and daughters are being killed by Muslims.



Jim Wallis, a Christian antipoverty community activist and a friend of Obama's said Obama comes from a very secular, skeptical family. His faith is a personal and adult choice. His material grandparents—who were professing atheists—had previously been Baptist and Methodist. His mother's tutelage leaned towards Islam only because her new husband was an ardent Muslim—and he demanded it.



She was not, however, the docile Muslim housewife most Muslim men expected. Obama's half-sister Maya admitted that her "...whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim." Because religion of any type rubbed his mother the wrong way, when he was 10, Obama's mother sent her son back to Hawaii to live with her parents.

In 2005 Obama met his paternal step-grandmoher (whom he calls his grandmother). Sarah Hussein Obama, 85, who lives in Kenya. She told the New York Times that she is "...a strong believer of Islamic faith," adding that she still rises at 5 a.m. to pray for an hour before tending to her crops and the three orphans she has taken in.



A camera which caught Obama on the political stage during a fund raiser for Sen. Tom Harkin in Iowa with presidential candidates Bill Richardson and Hillary Clinton shows his lack of respect to this nation during the singing of the National Anthem. Angered that the photo was released (and because the reporter erroneously stated the photo was taken during the Pledge of Allegiance rather than the singing of the national anthem, Obama said: "This is the classic dirty trick. This was not the Pledge of Allegiance. The woman was singing the Star Spangled Banner."



As a sign of respect to their nation, many Americans place their hand over their heart when the National Anthem is played as well as when they recite the Pledge. In his case, Obama said "...I was taught by my grandfather that you put your hands over your heart during the Pledge of Allegiance. The Star Spangled Banner, you sing." Only, when you look at the photo, its very clear that neither Obama nor the others on stage are singing. It was, however, the singing of the national anthem. All the time he was around either his father or stepfather, Obama was either in Hawaii or Indonesia. Thus, neither his paternal grandfather nor the father of his stepfather would have tutored him on placing his hand over his heart during the US Pledge of Allegiance, nor the singing the American Star Spangled Banner. Rest assured that Indonesian homes don't recite the Pledge or sing the US national anthem. And while Hawaii had been a State for three years before Obama was born, logic suggests its not likely an atheist mother and an Islamic father would teach him to recite the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the Star Spangled Banner.



In his teen years Obama moved back to Honolulu where he lived with his maternal grandparents. In his rebuttal, you will recall, Obama claimed his grandfather had taught him to place his hand over his heart during the Pledge, and to sing the national anthem. History has a problem with that on both sides of the family. Like his mother who was an atheist, so were her parents. Obama's grandmother, he said in interviews, "...was too rational and too stubborn to accept anything she couldn't see, feel, touch or count." His maternal grandfather was also an atheist who "...had an innate rebelliousness and a complete inability to discipline his appetites...who...experimented with marijuana and cocaine." An atheist is not going to teach his grandson to respect the Pledge of Allegiance which pays homage to God.



In August, 2006 US Senator Barack Obama [D-IL] made a special trip to visit a special man in Kenya. The man's name was Raila Amolo Odinga. He is the head of the National Muslim Leaders Forum [NAMLEF] in Kenya. The political party he heads is called the Orange Democratic Movement [ODM]—although there is definitely nothing democratic about his political party of NAMLEF. The ODM is dedicated to overthrowing the legitimate democratic government of Kenya. Odinga is not really concerned how he achieves his objective. It matters little to him if he assumes power through a free election—or by revolution. But, by hook or crook, he is determined to become the president of Kenya. If he succeeds, he will be president for life and Kenya will become another Afghanistan.



When the US Senator visited Kenya to meet with Odinga in Nairobi, the Kenyan government officially denounced the visit. And, most specifically, they denounced Obama. According to a Kenyan government spokesman, Obama's bias for his friend was so blatant that the government found it necessary to complain that Obama appeared to be Odinga's stooge. Not only did Obama campaign for his Islamic friend, he convinced former Clinton adviser Dick Morris to become Odinga's campaign adviser.



Odinga bothers the US State Department for a couple of reasons. First, after losing the democratic election on December 27, Raila Odinga cut a deal for support from Vladimir Putin and the former Soviet Union. Odinga knows he has to overthrow the government to gain power. When he lost the election, he protested that the vote was rigged to keep him from claiming an election he won. He incited his tribal followers to go on a murderous rampage in towns that were primarily Christian. Throughout Kenya, hundreds of people were murdered. What shocked the west is that the Kenyan media—and the political power brokers within the country—out of fear of Odinga, appear to be suggesting that perhaps the election should be held over to stop the violence and the potential for long term Muslim terrorism.



In a wave of violence aimed at protesting what they call the illegal election of newly-elected Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, a group of Christian women and children—some entire families—barricaded themselves in a church. Muslims, inflamed by Odinga's men, torched the church and burned to death everyone inside. This is the man Obama campaigned for in Kenya, and sang the praises of. This is also the man who claims that Barack Obama is a close, personal friend. Christianity would be outlawed.



There would be a complete ban on the public consumption of alcoholic beverages and a ban on western-style dress for women since this type of garb is considered immoral and an offense to the Muslim faith. Raila Obinga, it seems, would impose the same type of Shariah law that was imposed on Afghanistan by the Taliban. Odinga would degree that no Muslim living in Kenya—whether a citizen, visitor or relative of a citizen of Kenya (such as Obama, whose grandmother is a citizen of Kenya)‚shall be subject to any legal process involving the laws of a foreign country and in particular any Muslim arrested for, or suspected of, terrorism, or of any other international crimes shall only be tried inside the borders of Kenya and shall be granted a competent lawyer of his or her choice at the expense of the government.



The American people need to be asking Barack Obama a whole different list of questions when they attend his political rallies on his quest to become the leader of the free world. They need to ask the man who he really is because, up to this point on the campaign trail, he has lied to them. The American people need to find an honest candidate. Barack Obama is not that man.”



Who will finally win the race and enter White House in 2009? According to many of the analysts, Hillary Rodham Clinton will be a much stronger contestant for John McCain than Barack Obama. On the other hand, Mrs. Hillary has a global and national image as the former first lady, human rights activist, author and of course a popular Senator. On the other hand, Barack Obama is rather already a questioned individual for many reasons. Most possibly, the final round of ‘battle’ will be between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain. Gallop polls give us rather confusing conclusions. One will say, Hillary is the winner, while another will name McCain. There are even some predictions in favor of Barack Obama.



Senator Hillary’s family friend Nobel Laureate Professor Muhammed Yunus just opened a branch of his Grameen Bank in New York. There is no doubt that Professor Yunus will do everything to motivate Bangladeshi American voters in voting for Democratic candidate, precisely Hillary Clinton. Many even say that the reason behind rather hurried opening of Grameen’s office in New York was aimed at doing campaign in favor of Hillary Clinton. On the other hand, Republican candidate John McCain has not taken any special initiatives in attracting Bangladeshi American voters towards him.



One point here is more sensitive. None of the candidates from either of the parties did make any statement regarding trial or treatment of two former Prime Ministers in Bangladesh. Recently Attorney Cherie Blair, wife of former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair visited Bangladesh as international counsel for Awami League chief and former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Ms. Blair got extensive media coverage in Bangladesh during her stay. Her actions will surely make pro-Awami League Bangladeshi Britons extremely delighted. It is even learnt that Ms. Blair is willing to defend the case of former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, who is the chief of Bangladesh Nationalist Party. Although there is rumor that, Hasina’s younger sister Sheikh Rehana, who lives luxurious life in London, hired the services of Ms. Blair for a huge amount of money. Being a practicing lawyer, Ms. Blair accepted the brief. But, whatever the cause may be, it is understood that, her arrival in Dhaka was seen as extremely important by the media, policymakers and mass people. It was equally expected that the Presidential candidates in United States might have issued statement at least demanding fair trial of the former prime ministers as well as Bangladesh’s immediate return to democratic process. But, up to now, there isn’t any.

According to think tanks in Dhaka, the ongoing battle between two of the Democrat candidates may ultimately go in favor of the Republican candidate. But, no one can say with certainty as to whether, after the candidate from the Democrat quarter is finalized, the losing candidate may even start campaigning in favor of the winning candidate. In that case, of course, things will change. Meanwhile, supporters of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are keeping their fingers crossed for winning the nomination battle now. Right after this, the real battle will begin. Entering White House in 2009 will be a big challenge for both Republican and Democrat.