Rwanda News Agency/Agence Rwandaise d'Information (Kigali)
28 August 2008
Kigali — A senior Congolese politician Mr. Azarias Ruberwa is of the view that Africa has a lot to learn from the political maturity that is being displayed at the U.S. Democratic Party Convention in Denver, RNA reports.
"There is nothing as this kind of democratic maturity anywhere in Africa", said Mr. Ruberwa - head of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD) who is attending the convention in the State of Colorado.
"In Africa we are still at the ABC stage of democratic development," he said this morning on the Voice of America Great Lakes service after witnessing the outright endorsement of the Democratic Party candidate Senator Barack Obama by her once fiercest critics Senator Hillary Clinton and her husband former President Bill Clinton.
Mr. Ruberwa was one of the 33 candidates in the 2006 Congolese presidential elections that brought President Joseph Kabila to power. The former militia leader could not raise any tangible vote tally and has since disappeared from the political scene that is now dominated by Mr. Kabila's coalition.
Mr. Ruberwa added: "By Senator Clinton endorsing Senator Obama is a very strong lesson to Africa that election political opponents are not enemies as it has happened in so many African countries."
Senator Barack Obama, a freshman senator who defeated the first family of Democratic Party politics with a call for a fundamentally new course in politics, was nominated by his party on Wednesday to be the 44th president of the United States.
The unanimous vote made Mr. Obama the first African-American to become a major party nominee for president. His nomination by all the delegates along with his vice presidential partner Senator Joseph R Biden, means Mr. Obama comes on Thursday to address the convention with total acceptance.
It brought to an end an often-bitter two-year political struggle for the nomination with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, who, standing on a packed convention floor electric with anticipation, moved to halt the roll call in progress so that the convention could nominate Mr. Obama by acclamation, the New York Times said.
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