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Suzanna Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian writer and activist who won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and in 2002, the Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize.

As a fervent opponent of US foreign policy she supported neither Bush nor Kerry during the 2004 elections.

Roy has likened the choice to an option of two brands of detergent owned by the same company.

“I kind of resent the idea that the whole world has to be interested in the American elections,” she says.

Even with Bush due to make his much anticipated exit and an air of expectation about the potential of the first ever black US President - assuming he wins of course - Roy remains pessimistic and refuses to give her endorsement to either Obama or McCain.

She predicts the coming months will see Obama turn into a white man and warns against expecting a miracle: “He’ll have to prove that he is whiter than the white man. And if it was Hillary Clinton she would also have had to become a white man.”

But surely Obama would be an improvement over the more conservative, hawkish, McCain? Roy acknowledges the US presidency is a very powerful position but says that she feels such a complex system has been put into place that he is not really able to make decisions himself. Roy compares the situation confronted by the US electorate to the one faced by their Indian counterparts in picking between Congress and BJP. “It is a humiliating choice,” she says.

allix wrote:Roy has likened the choice to an option of two brands of detergent owned by the same company.