People in charge don’t know what their doing  –  Obama

Former US President Barack Obama (2009-2017) criticized on  Saturday the response to the coronavirus pandemic, assuring that it  is clear that “the people in charge” do not “know what they are doing”, in a little veiled attack on the Government of his successor Donald Trump.

“More than anything, this pandemic has completely and finally exposed the idea that the people in charge know what they are doing,” Obama said in a joint virtual graduation speech to several universities with traditionally African-American students in the United States.

“Many of them are not even pretending to be in charge,” he added without mentioning Trump at any time. reports the EPA News agency.

Obama, who has tried to stay out of the political scrum with few public appearances since his departure from the Presidency in 2017, has recently raised his profile in view of the approaching November presidential elections and last week described the response of the White House to pandemic as a “chaotic disaster”.

For his part, Trump hinted on Thursday that his predecessor is to blame for the US  not having enough facemasks and ventilators available at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Obama  indicated that the coronavirus crisis has highlighted “the underlying inequalities and the additional burdens that black communities have historically had to deal with in this country.”

“We see it in the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 in our communities, as well as when a black man goes to jog , and others feel that they can stop him and question and shoot if he does not fold to their s interrogation,” he said.

Obama was referring to the murder of Ahamaud Arbery, a young black athlete killed last February when he was allegedly mistaken for a thief in Georgia, an incident that has sparked outrage in the country for its racist implications.

“These injustices are not new. What is new is that a large part of their generation has woken up to the fact that it is necessary to fix the status quo needs to be fixed, that the old ways of doing things do not work, that no matter how much You earn money if everyone around you is hungry and sick, “he said.

The United States, the current focus of the pandemic, this Saturday reached 1,463,350 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 88,447 deaths, according to an independent count by Johns Hopkins University.