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Guessing who, current President Donald Trump or his rival Joe Biden, and how he will end up in the White House quickly became a global concern.
Government leaders tried to cope with the news of the delay and ordinary people exchanged views, expectations and fears. For the first time, some have been surprised that the president of the United States is not chosen by the electorate, but by members of the College of Electors, who need at least 270 to win.
There has been some resentment in corners of the world that have been criticized by the United States for its electoral and governance systems. The American electoral drama that attracts the world’s attention was also highlighted by maps published by Japanese television, in which states critical to the election result were marked with fireballs.
123RF and Scanpix / AP Photo / US Presidential Election: Donald Trump and Joe Biden
“I heard that it may take some time before everything is clear,” said Taro Aso, Japan’s finance minister. “I have no idea how this could affect us.”
A Spaniard living in Paris was shocked to find the winner of the US elections when he got up in the morning. “I thought it would be clear. I read different articles, nobody really knows who will win. It impacted me a lot,” said Javier Sáenz.
The fact that the winner was not immediately announced does not in itself indicate that anything is wrong. At a time when life was being turned upside down by a pandemic, the conditions for voting by mail were relaxed in many states, resulting in a slower than usual verification and recount of votes sent this way.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navaln, who defied the Kremlin and was poisoned with nerve-crippling material, even said the delay comforted and demonstrated how democracy works.
“I woke up and went to Twitter to see who won. It is still unclear. That is what I call elections,” he wrote on this social network.
Reuters / Photo by Scanpix / Alexei Navaln
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison also said the delay in announcing the winner is proof of how democracy works.
“I have a lot of confidence in America’s democracy and a lot of confidence in its institutions, and the thing about great institutions and democracies is that they address the challenges they face, just like our own institutions and democracy,” Morrison told the journalists in Sydney.
Elsewhere, however, there is concern about the uncertainty surrounding growing concern about the ability of American society to accept the highly fragmented election campaign. The unusual and premature declarations of victory by Trump himself, and his threat to go to the Supreme Court for elections, also provoked anxiety and comparisons with autocrats.
“It was a ‘brief, or we are burning the country’ moment,” joked Syrian expert Danny Makki, paraphrasing the slogans “Assad, or we are burning the country,” which supporters of President Bashar al-Assad sprayed on the walls as beginning of the Syrian civil war.
Some parts of the world, especially Europe, were urged not to lose patience and to count votes carefully.
In Slovenia, where the American first lady, Melania Trump, was born, right-wing Prime Minister Janez Janša said it was “clear that the American people had elected Donald Trump,” but not all other leaders wanted to get ahead of the American results.
“Reuters” / “Scanpix” nuotr./Janezas Janša
German Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz highlighted the counting of all the votes: “For us it is important that everything is counted and that we finally have a clear result.”
German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said that “the fight for the legitimacy of the results has begun, no matter how it ends.”
“It just came to our attention then. The situation, which experts rightly say, could lead to a constitutional crisis in the United States, Kramp-Karrenbauer told ZDF television.” We have a lot to worry about.
In financial markets, investors hoping for a clearer outcome had a hard time catching up, so indices rose and fell. Industry lobbyists in Germany and Japan, both US trading partners, warned that prolonged uncertainty could have a negative impact on business.
America’s traditional allies hoped that regardless of who achieved victory, the foundation of some important long-standing American relationship would be maintained.
“Whatever the outcome of the elections, they (the Americans) will certainly remain our allies for many years and decades to come,” said Thierry Breton, European Commissioner for the Internal Market.
Until the void was filled, they tried to score points for themselves. Some in Russia, Africa, and elsewhere have argued that the US electoral process reveals the shortcomings of American democracy.
“Africa was learning about American democracy, and now America is learning about African democracy,” Nigerian Senator Shehu Sani said on Twitter, reiterating a fairly common view about a continent long accustomed to problematic elections and criticism of The United States towards them.
Patrick Chinamasa, spokesman for the ruling ZANU-PF party in Zimbabwe, said: “We have nothing to learn about former slave democracy.”
But others say the US elections were characterized by high voter turnout despite the pandemic.
“It will be an extraordinary story for democracy, whatever the outcome,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, an international relations expert at Chatham House, a London-based center for strategic studies.
But he added: “If we see the disputed election in the next few days, a president suspected of fraud, people attacking some fight for results trying to block the count, then I think we will be in a completely different situation.”
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