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This has been what political observers might describe as a season of elections.
In the first few months of 2024, hundreds of millions of people have gone to the polls in India, South Africa and Europe; more recently here in the UK, and by the end of the year in the US.
There, one of the candidates is a former President, who claims - with no recognised authority - that the last time Americans voted he lost due to widespread fraud. Since then, he has been tried and convicted on 34 criminal charges.
This current presidential campaign has been laced with poisonous rhetoric and has divided the US, perhaps as never before.
Maybe that’s why my mind has so frequently drifted back to a presidential election, the like of which no commentator ever thought possible in any part of this century.
A junior senator from Illinois – a black man – with the unlikely name of Barack Hussein Obama had won handsomely, confirming America’s ability to be outrageously astonishing.
And I was there to see a great deal of it. I felt privileged…
"One woman, tears rolling down her face, a voice shaking with emotion, told me, 'I was born in Mississippi in the American South, and I could never in my wildest dreams believe I would see such a day.' She spoke for millions."
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