Obama wins re-election as U.S. President

Barack Obama, the first African-American President of the United States, won re-election and will occupy the White House for another four year term.

The decision was rendered by a very divided electorate after a grueling $1 Billion campaign that started in early 2011. He defeated the former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney.

As the Pattaya Times went to press, Obama secured 303 electoral votes versus 203 for his opponent, and seemed on his way to win the popular vote as well, although the counting of ballots across the fifty states was expected to take many more hours, indeed days in some cases.

An army of lawyers were witnessing voting procedures in thousands of towns and cities across the nation; and European observers also attended to witness the vote to insure democratic standards were fully respected in each of the 50 states.

In addition to the presidential contest, the upper chamber of the American Congress, the Senate, will remain in the hands of President Obama’s party, the Democrats; and the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, will remain firmly in the hands of Mr. Romney’s Republican party.

American policy toward Thailand and the rest of Asia was not expected to be seriously affected by the outcome of the election, as both parties have a deep respect for the long and close relationship between the Kingdom of Thailand and the United States. Both presidential candidates stressed the importance of maintaining a presence in Asia for the long-term, and support the deepening ties among the South-East Asian nations, including Thailand, about to join together in an economic community from 2015.