Opinions of Saturday, 29 June 2024
Columnist: Abdul-Karim Mohammed Awaf
The US goes to the polls in November, while voters in the UK are gearing up for July’s crucial elections, which promise to be a dog fight between the Conservatives and the Labour Party.
However, voters in both the US and the UK face, perhaps, the most difficult choices in these elections given the exigencies and the complexities of the times vis-à-vis the candidates involved.
In my view, the leading candidates for this year’s elections in both the UK and the US are, without exaggeration, the worst tickets in maybe a generation.
Voters in the world’s unipolar giant must choose between the Democrats, whose candidate is quite mentally frail, often sounding incoherent and forgetful, maybe due to old age, and the Republicans, represented by Trump, a convicted felon with zero morality who lies with pleasure.
As someone deeply troubled by the situation in Gaza, I see no commitment from either side of the political divide to end the conflict or hold Benjamin Netanyahu and his associates, cited by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, accountable.
In the UK, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is just a polished version of Nigel Farage, supporting policies not substantially different from the Tory Party, whose time in office has so far been nothing short of drama and disaster in equal measure, and still faces substantial backlash for its handling of issues surrounding the NHS and the ever-soaring housing crisis, not forgetting Rishi Sunak’s favorite political punchline, ‘the Rwanda Plan’ which has been floppy to say the least.
As a UK voter, I have zero desire to cast my ballot for any of the leading candidates in this race due to their lack of clear policies, especially their foreign policy direction and issues of immigration.