DC Edit | A question mark on rule of law in US as Trump is back
In a world fast going off facts and truth as reference points, it might not seem too bizarre that a convicted felon will soon be the President of the United States. As Donald Trump gets ready to step into the White House for a second term Monday week, he will not be facing a jail term or other punishment for his felony on 34 counts, but that is only because he is to be the President of the USA.
As an elected leader, Mr Trump had chipped away at democratic institutions already in his first term, towards the end of which he even tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential poll. And worse, he egged his supporters on to carry put an insurrection at a glittering symbol of democracy in Capitol Hill. He tried to overturn the popular verdict by asking officials not to endorse the result that favoured Joe Biden, and he was careless to the point of disdain with classified documents.
Even so, Mr Trump did not have to stand trial for serious crimes against democracy; only for covering up a payment to a porn star to buy her silence before the 2016 polls. As a person sentenced for a financial shenanigan, he will breeze in to lead the avowedly greatest democracy and what will matter most is the degree to which institutions can check him. Given the pliant attitude even of the world’s richest technology czars who are paying obeisance to the demigod of anarchy, it is on the cards that he can make them bend like putty.
The rule of law worked — up to a point. Judge Juan Manuel Merchan went so far as to deliver the first criminal sentencing of an American President who will, ironically, swear on the Bible soon to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. And he will have senior Cabinet members and top government officials to assist him while they themselves are accused of sexual misconduct or business fraud. Should it surprise anyone that they are indeed Trump clones?
That brings us to the point about the standards of who is fit to lead a country which, in a true elected democracy, is determined not by politicians or a judge but by the voters. That logic arms the winners with an impunity that sees them adorn themselves with an impenetrable armour precluding such concepts as accountability to rule of law. They are, in effect, the supreme autocrats who will decide what is good for a nation and its people and bow to no Constitutional provisions.
As if anxieties over the fate of institutions safeguarding democratic balance of power were not enough, Mr Trump appears set to bring an imperial agenda into the President’s office with his eyes already on Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal. Whether such thinking will translate into action in this age or not, it can only spur the ambitions of greater autocrats than Mr Trump who have already acted on territorial annexation in Ukraine and have eyes on Taiwan.
Never in history could the apprehensions of so many billions have been concentrated on so few men as a convicted felon in Mr Trump will make it a troika of leaders with authoritarian intentions and practices including an anointed supreme leader in Mr XI Jinping and an unchallenged tsar with a quarter century of rule behind him already in Vladimir Putin.