One Hong Kong lawmaker, Claudia Mo, said it was “the death-knell of Hong Kong’s democracy fight.” But she was part of it: One of the 15 remaining pro-democracy members of the Legislative Council (Legco) who resigned recently in protest at the expulsion of four other democratically-elected members of the pseudo-Parliament. Wu Chi-wai, speaking for the 15 who resigned, tweeted that, “‘One country, two systems’ in Hong Kong has come to an end.” That is true, and it is regrettable, but it’s hard to see how a mass resignation that eliminates all pro-democracy legislators from Legco helps the cause. Bad tactics in a good cause has been the hallmark of the democratic movement’s behaviour throughout the last 18 months. It mobilised a very effective non-violent protest campaign when the Communist Government in Beijing introduced a law in June 2019 that directly challenged the deal signed by China and the former colonial power, the UK, in 1997.

The UK ignored the democratic rights of the city’s Chinese majority for most of its 155-year tenure, but when it handed the colony back to China in 1997, it did get a guarantee that Hong Kong could keep its free institutions, including freedom of speech and of the Press, impartial courts, and a separate, partly democratic Government for 50 years. “One country, two systems” was the slogan. Beijing’s new law would have allowed Hong Kong residents to be transferred to mainland courts for certain “security” offences. So the protesters spilled out into the streets to protect the status quo, which kept all Hong Kongers free from Communist interference and made some very rich. Within three months, Chief Executive Carrie Lam withdrew the legislation. The Hong Kong Government is not an entirely free agent and Lam initially went along with Beijing’s demand. By withdrawing it, she was signalling that Beijing was willing to drop the matter for now. But the protesters snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

The sensible thing to do was accept the concession and go home. Beijing’s demand might come back again in five years, but enjoy the time you have won. The Communist regime will never let you have any more than this, and the mainland population outnumbers you 200-to-one. Instead of going home happy, the protesters stayed out in the streets and raised the stakes, demanding fully free elections and more autonomy for Hong Kong. They also broke the prime rule and allowed their protests to become violent. (Don’t explain that the police are being violent; your only safety lies in remaining non-violent regardless of the provocation.)

So Xi Jinping’s Communist regime in Beijing struck back hard against what it saw as a serious challenge to its authority. A new law was imposed on Hong Kong, contrary to the 1997 agreement, that effectively subordinates the city’s legal system to Beijing’s whims. It was the end of Hong Kong’s legal autonomy, and to rub it in, four pro-democracy legislators were expelled from the Legco. In a final Quixotic gesture last week, all the remaining democrats in the Legco quit too. It’s a prelude to a far larger abandonment. Hong Kong’s relative freedom was always conditional and ultimately doomed (2047 at the latest) but last week’s blundering collapse was premature and far from inevitable. Only two substantive questions now remain. What happens to Taiwan, and where will all the Hong Kongers, who want to leave, go? One-third of Hong Kong’s seven million people were born on the mainland: Some of them moved to the city for the money, but most were undoubtedly getting away from the Communists. Another third will be the children or grand-children of those refugees (the city’s population was only 6,00,000 in 1945) and will probably share their opinions. A lot will leave.

An estimated 6,00,000 Hong Kong residents already hold full foreign passports, half Canadians and most of the rest Australian, British or American ones. They acquired them as an insurance policy, and this is the contingency they were insuring against. Another three million people hold British National (Overseas) passports or can easily acquire them, and London promises that they can all move to the UK if they wish. The “central range” estimate of the British Home Office is that between 2,58,000 and 3,22,000 Hong Kongers will come within five years, but it could be many more. That’s unless Beijing stops them from leaving. But if it closes the gates like that, it would be the definitive end of Hong Kong as a great international trading city. And what about Taiwan? Well, “one country, two systems” was also the promise Beijing was holding out to Taiwan to seduce it into peaceful reunification. It has now been comprehensively trashed, and the long-term likelihood of an attempted military “solution” to the Taiwan “problem” has just risen significantly.

(Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work’)

In the United States of America, the civilian post of Defence Secretary is a political appointment even though it is usually held by former combatants, who have the domain experience and perspective. Yet it calls for trapeze jugglery as the former Defence Secretary and legendary warrior-scholar, General James Mattis, noted, “Remember that the Defence Department stays outside of politics for a reason. There’s a long-standing tradition, why you do not want the military to be engaged in politics.” With such apolitical and professional instincts, the likes of James Mattis were not expected to survive long with the infamous Donald Trump fickleness. And they didn’t – Mattis joined the revolving door of axed veterans, who couldn’t lower their discourse to match the President’s impetuousness and crassness.

Mattis’s predecessor as Secretary of Defence, Ash Carter, was an international affairs academician, who had spent over 37 years in the Pentagon working across the political divide, and he always believed that the “profession of arms is honour and trust” and that Trump’s brazenly political expectations, interference and insistence would infect the apolitical ways of the US military. Recently, Trump fired his fourth Secretary of Defence Mark Esper and appointed his fifth, Christopher Miller. As the Chief Executive Officer of the United States Department of Defence, the fifth appointee in less than four years is a self-explanatory narrative of Trump’s whimsicality, impatience and unprofessionalism. Except that the timing of this particular change, just after Trump’s electoral debacle, but before Biden’s formal take-over, has sent dangerous signals – because with Trump, anything is possible.

Given his vanity and desperation, fears that he could deploy the US military, in a last-ditch effort of his final two-month tenure, are real. For long, Trump has dangled and invoked the military as a political prop for self-aggrandisement and even as a tool for domestic governance. What gives credence to conspiracy theorists is the tentative relationship that Mark Esper had with the Commander-in-Chief, Trump, especially when the former combatant had disagreed with the idea of using the military during civil unrest. Embarrassingly for Trump, Esper opposed the Insurrection Act of 1807 by stating the institutional belief, “I say this not only as Secretary of Defence, but also as a former soldier, and a former member of the National Guard. The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations.” Earlier also, Esper had weighed in favour with the professional view of the “uniformed” fraternity in dissuading Trump from hastening the process of troops withdrawal from Syria and Afghanistan – as this urgency was Trump’s personal and political commitment, but contrary to the institutional and sovereign interests. However, for Trump, who can readily trade military values of restraint and apolitical stances in favour of his political self-interest, professionals like Esper are a burden and not an asset. Replacing Esper with a professionally lacklustre but an avowedly Trump-loyalist has not helped optics either.    

Even though the Trump tenure has compromised and forced many casual liberties on the US military ecosystem, it would not be a cakewalk to get the institution to “fall in line” politically, despite these unprecedented changes. The US military folk have repeatedly shown the spine, moral courage and constitutionality in words and actions to “call out” signs of danger. Foremost among them has been General Mike Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had earlier unknowingly become victim of a political “photo-op” by Trump during the civic protests, pursuant to which he issued a very public and honest regret that his presence had created an unwanted and wrong perception of military involvement in domestic politics. Later, Milley went further and bluntly denied that he gave permission to use his image in the Trump re-election campaign. Now, as Milley watched the ensuing drama of the untimely change of Secretary of Defence – which is essentially beyond his professional mandate or control – he still chose to word a very deliberate and reassuring message when he said in the midst of the new Secretary of Defence Christopher Miller, “We do not take an oath to a King or a Queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual!” Milley passionately beseeched that duty was only to the Constitution, which he called the “moral north star” for the institution. His statement that the military “will protect and defend that document regardless of the personal price” was immensely loaded and cautionary against any attempt to politicise or misuse the military. Milley joined the ranks of his illustrious predecessor Marine General Joseph Dunford in managing the political expectations of Trump, whenever things started going adrift.

Esper had alluded to the necessary public perceptions of apolitical anchorage when it came to matters military, when he had spoken about getting “ambushed” in the photo-op.  “Look, I do everything I can to try and stay apolitical and try to stay out of situations that may appear political,” he said, adding, “Sometimes, I’m successful, and sometimes I’m not as successful.” This time that effort to stay steadfast, without succumbing to politicisation of the US military, has led to his ouster but in that sacrifice, Esper may have saved the US military from unimaginable portents of a partisan force. The serving top brass of the US military themselves have shown admirable restraint in not kowtowing to the political establishment, especially with a dispensation that has thrown caution to the winds in terms of diluting, denigrating and politicising the institution. The military invests incalculable emotions in professional character or what we call izzat. As General Norman Schwarzkopf of Operation Desert Storm fame once said, “Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without strategy.” In this melee, it is that apolitical nobility and almost Chetwodian ethos that have been upheld by the US military’s top brass, despite the price to some.

(The writer, a military veter-an, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)

Ever since the creation of the opposition alliance, the Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the word “gaddaar (traitor)” has been activated by the Prime Minister Imran Khan-led Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) Government. Its targets in this context are mostly high-profile Opposition leaders and journalists who are highly critical of the current Government (and its backers). There is nothing new in Pakistan about those in power describing their opponents as “traitors” or “fifth columnists.” This has been going on since the 1950s. It began with a Government describing Communists as “fifth columnists” and, then, in 1954 — after accusing the Communist Party of Pakistan of being on the payroll of the erstwhile Soviet Union’s Intelligence agency, it banned the party. When the four provinces of former West Pakistan were abolished in 1955 to create a so-called “One Unit,” the words “gaddaar” and “fifth columnist” returned. But this time they targetted Sindhi, Baloch and Pashtun nationalist groups that protested against the creation of One Unit.

During the 1965 presidential election, the State media did not even spare Fatima Jinnah, the sister of the founder of Pakistan, who was challenging self-declared Field Marshal Ayub Khan in the polls. She was crudely demonised for “working with anti-Pakistan elements whose sympathies lay with enemy countries.” Yet, all this did not stop the fall of the Ayub regime (in 1969), and the State from being forced to abolish the One Unit. However, because of the antagonistic separation of East Pakistan in 1971, the alarmist exercise of labelling the Opposition “fifth columnists” and “traitors” was revived once again, this time by an elected regime. In 1975, after declaring that its opponents in the National Awami Party (NAP) were working to further splinter the country (“at the behest of hostile foreign powers”) the populist Government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto banned the NAP through a court order. Yet, two years later, Bhutto himself was toppled in a reactionary military coup engineered by General Zia. Just before Bhutto’s execution in 1979 through a sham trial, General Zia attacked Bhutto as the man who broke Pakistan (in 1971), even though, at the time of East Pakistan’s secession, General Yahya Khan was at the helm as “President” and Chief Martial Law Administrator.

Across the General Zia dictatorship (1977-88), Opposition leaders were not only banned from taking part in politics, but they were also constantly demonised as being Soviet and Indian agents. What’s more, the dictatorship added another dimension to this ploy, by describing his opponents as “anti-Islam.” Again, this did not stop the people from electing Bhutto’s party, the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), twice after General Zia’s death even though, during the 1988 election, Bhutto’s daughter Benazir was vehemently attacked by the then pro-establishment Pakistan Muslim League (PML) of Nawaz Sharif for allegedly wanting to roll back Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Benazir was later accused by the Right-wing Press of “inviting US intervention” when she was removed as Prime Minister by the “establishmentarian” President Ishaq Khan in 1990.

Ironically, by 1999, Nawaz himself began to face the label of being a “traitor” when his second Government was toppled by General Pervez Musharraf. Yet, in 2008, it was General Musharraf who was forced to resign. During the fourth PPP Government (2008-2013), pro-establishment groups continued to undermine the regime, accusing it of safeguarding the interests of the US in the region, even when, ironically, much of American aid was being pocketed by the Pakistani military to fight terrorism.

Today, one is again witnessing a similarly vicious anti-Opposition campaign unleashed by the Government, in cahoots with its sympathisers. Many in Pakistan are of the view that the ploy of demonising opponents as “traitors” or “fifth columnists” is very much a Pakistani trait. Not quite. A study published on May 24, 2018, by the British academic and author, Dmitry Chernobrov, demonstrates that the aforementioned ploy has been regularly wielded in various countries, especially by current populist regimes in the US, UK, Russia, India, Brazil, Turkey, Poland, Pakistan and Hungary, and by overtly authoritarian set-ups in Egypt, Belarus and so on.

According to the Australian researcher and author Robert Loeffel, in his 2015 book, The Fifth Column in World War II, the term “fifth columnist” first originated during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s between Left-wing Republicans and the ultra-nationalists led by the Spanish military. The nationalist General Mola announced that, although four columns of troops surrounded Republican-held Madrid, the city would fall to a fifth column ready to strike from within. By this he was alluding to secret sympathisers within the Republicans who would weaken them from the inside.

During World War II, Nazis in Germany and the fascist regime in Italy began to demonise and hunt down opponents by labelling them as “traitors” and “fifth columnists” who were working for their enemies. Does this ploy actually aid regimes to vanquish their opponents? History suggests that it does not. So, if it doesn’t, why is it so constantly used? And does it gain any traction from the polity? The answer to the last question is related to the answer of the first. Nazi Germany and fascist Italy fell in the most violent manner. And a majority of Germans and Italians turned against their fascist past whereas those once demonised as being “fifth columnists” returned to rule and reconstruct these countries. One can say that, in the throes of intense crises, polities may get emotionally invested in looking for scapegoats and support the labelling of people as “fifth columnists.” But this does not last.

In their 1997 book, Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Barry Buzan, Ole Wæver and Jaap de Wilde write that the propensity of a regime to start describing opponents as “traitors” and “fifth columnists” often increases in times of political and economic crises. They write that such regimes identify themselves as being expressions of the State’s security and, therefore, their act of branding opponents as traitors can be explained as a “securitising move.” By this the authors mean the regimes club together the Government and those who agree with its point of view as patriots, and discard those who don’t as traitors — because they reject a point of view which is supposedly “in the best interest of the State and nation.”

Therefore, political Opposition is typically blamed as externally funded, destabilising and treacherous. But as we have seen in Pakistan, this ploy often becomes a caricature of itself and an unintentional self-parody, especially when deployed by a regime which is fluent in rhetoric but entirely inarticulate and even stunted in ways of governance. The Imran Khan regime has nothing to offer to a polity in a crisis, other than lectures on patriotism and warnings about largely imagined “traitors.”

(Courtesy: The Pioneer / Dawn)

It is not the best of times to be Rahul Gandhi, what with the Congress hitting new lows both electorally and politically and all of it being attributed to his lustreless persona, directionless ideas and unchanging ways. The Gandhi scion continues to lose the battle of perception despite the many image makeovers he might have undergone. But the latest opinion of former US President Barack Obama has definitely done him in. In his new memoir, Promised Land, the Democrat leader, who has worked extensively with the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) while in office, made quite uncharitable and unflattering remarks about him. Basing his observations on a short meeting he had with Rahul in 2017, he described him as having a “nervous unformed quality about him,” like a student eager to impress the teacher but “lacking aptitude and passion to master the subject.” Considering it comes from a world leader with proven liberal values and one who would be deeply invested in politicians sharing his vision, this comment definitely shows up Rahul as a reluctant leader forced into circumstances and explains much of his recalcitrance and abandonment of Congress affairs after the Lok Sabha debacle of 2019. This lends further grist to criticism about his ability to lead the party again, something that his mother Sonia Gandhi wants. His political opponents and their troll armies have long tried to undermine him, both as a leader of any standing and as a serious critic of the Government by giving him nicknames like “shehzada”, “pappu” and so on. Even when he does make valid points, like questioning the Government about the ailing economy, or the plight of women or the poor handling of the pandemic, despite him raising the issue way before it turns into a major crisis for the country, his detractors are dismissive of his voice. Plus, Opposition unity has suffered badly because of his non-serious nature with senior leaders like Mamata Banerjee and Chandrababu Naidu refusing to deal with his immaturity. But this book has just unmade his efforts at being serious through the year of the pandemic at least. For Obama’s words are sincere and precise and unlike the vacuous name-calling by trolls, are actually trenchant, projecting the reality of Rahul as it is. And it rings more true as the former US President had a few good words for the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in comparison. He found him, like former US Secretary of Defence Bob Gates, to be among those who have a “kind of impassive integrity.” Clearly, this draws more attention to Singh being the “accidental and silent” Prime Minister, who had to kowtow to the Congress first family. The “told you so” comments are predictably flooding the Internet.

However, Rahul is not the only politician to have been at the receiving end of Obama’s biting wit as he has described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “physically unremarkable.” This demolishes the carefully constructed belief of the latter being the epitome of hypermasculinity in his country, particularly after his widely-publicised photo shoot in which the bare-chested leader can be seen riding a horse in Siberia, giving him instant mythical status in Russia. He has also compared Putin to “tough, street-smart ward bosses who used to run Chicago.” He recalls the former President of France, Nicolas Sarkozy as “bold and opportunistic” with “his chest thrust out like a bantam cock’s.” And even though he has kind words for the US President-elect Joe Biden and calls him an honest, loyal and decent man, Obama does say that he sensed Biden “might get prickly if he thought he wasn’t given his due — a quality that might flare up when dealing with a much younger boss.” Obama is not bound by diplomatic niceties of his office anymore but as a statesman, he has made an honest assessment of leadership and left us to deduce what its components should be by exposing shortcomings. If anything, Obama’s observation should be Rahul’s wake-up call. For his own good.

Like they do so often these days, pollsters and pundits got it wrong about a so-called massive victory for Joe Biden propelled by public anger against Trump’s presidency that had split the US wide open. They had harped on the social and racial divide that Trump had engineered and had put all their cards on the table around this core issue, hoping that this divide would secure a comfortable win for Biden and heal the present divided States of America. What we got instead was an election that went down to the wire which Biden managed to scrape through. Even as Trump was breathing down his opponent’s neck, the pollsters had a tough time convincing the people, and themselves, where they went wrong and why they failed to sense the public mood.

If Biden won some key States like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, it was a sigh of relief rather than a vindication of poll pundits. To give the devil his due, Biden in his victory speech, said, “I pledge to be a President who does not see red or blue States, but United States. For all those of you who voted for President Trump, I understand the disappointment tonight… But now, let’s give each other a chance…It’s time to put away the harsh rhetoric, lower the temperature, see each other again, listen to each other again. And to make progress, we have to stop treating our opponents as our enemies. They are not our enemies. They are Americans.” It is difficult to find fault with such clarity of thought that offers an insight into the way he is planning to run the show.

Though statesmanlike, Biden’s speech must be seen in terms of realpolitik. On the face of it, he is making an effort to move away from a binary framework which many believe was mainstreamed by Trump. It is another story that Biden may not be radically different from Trump in terms of economic policies or international relations and in spite of his sage-like calmness vis-à-vis Trump’s abrasive demeanour, his policies may not reflect that outward garb. The declaration of intent by Biden that his first job is to unify the country has been celebrated as a watershed development and a moment of awakening of the great nation that is waking up to its Puritan ideals of being a city on the hill. But the reality is that the US will pursue a politics that favours its own interest rather than India’s or China’s. Even if we assume that Biden will indeed usher in world peace that has not been seen before, its reality can only be imagined in a time yet to be.

Biden’s speech was apparently a clarion call to “make America great again.” What was lost in the cacophony of media analysis is that race ties are much more than the Black-White divide. Since the time of the founding fathers, the idea of frontier has dominated the US’ imagination and the worst victims have been the native Americans who went on moving westward while vacating space for the Europeans. The history of slavery is as much a history of dispossession and violence as has been the history of the frontier. And unlike the visibility and general awareness of African-American history, it just does not exist outside books and certainly not in the popular debates, maybe because of the numerical weakness of native Americans. Similarly, the presence of Mexicans in the southern borders and later the influx of Hispanic migrants and Asians in the aftermath of the World War do not count as racial issues. Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian-American professor from Columbia, was clear that in spite of the intellectuals’ fascination for Biden, he is not going to vote for him. He was convinced that Biden is as much a symbol of misogyny as is Trump, one who also supported the Iraq invasion. He differed from other leading intellectuals like Cornel West and Noam Chomsky, who preferred Biden. This is because “demonic” Trump is unredeemable whereas Biden can be pressurised to do good. This lesser-evil syndrome in English media is a lame excuse rather than a position of conviction. Converting a political choice into a moral one is dangerous to say the least because it sees things in black and white, creates saints out of challengers and demons out of the incumbent. Now the question remains if the media simply represented what they saw taking place or created a razor-sharp divide. If one believes in the constitutive power of language and images, then the media, too, created the divide, gave wind to it so that it could frame the debates along predictable lines.

Unfortunately, most of the media reduced race relations to Black-White problems and limited the enormity of their complexity to the period of Trump’s presidency. What we got in the process is not a substantive engagement with the foundation of the US as a nation with multiple layers of conflict and collaboration, but sound-bites and clichés that concentrated around Black-White relations, more or less the way Indian problems are framed around the Hindu-Muslim conflict. This vastness got squeezed into the period of 2016-2020 and cathected onto a symbol that is Trump. By reducing him to the be all and end all of everything that ails the US, most of the media peddled in sloganeering rather than explaining anything. What we got was a caricatured version of social reality where we have heroes and villains. In the process, the media absolved itself and society at large from taking any responsibility for simplifying things and immunised all possible future perpetrators with the understanding that all race-related problems will disappear with Trump’s defeat. What is disturbing is the ease with which experts saw him as the root cause and refused to see the problem in the very American consciousness and its exceptionalism that pervades Biden’s psyche as  much.

Some commentators believe that “Trumpism” will continue to live on even after his loss. Their understanding is that “if a demagogue has the skill and the cheek to build a dominant majority’s latent insecurities into a victim complex, he can build an impregnable base.” They go on to compare Trump’s US with Narendra Modi’s India, something which betrays ignorance of unique historical experiences of these two nations. What they ignore is their own position as knowledge producers create and perpetrate the language of exclusion. In the act of interpreting reality, many thought leaders end up producing it and cling on to that as if reality is a fiction of journalistic language. US  TV anchor Van Jones broke down on live TV while covering Biden’s victory. Another called Trump an “obese turtle on his back realising his time is over.” Yes, Trump was a sore loser but such language perpetuates the divide and conditions intellectual debates around them.

Now let us face the reality of race politics and the impact of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and to what extent the social divide actually played out during the election. It may surprise many that Trump actually improved his popularity among Black voters compared to 2016. Even though it stands at a meagre eight per cent, it is still two per cent higher than what he polled earlier. Even as this is nothing compared to what Biden got, it will continue to rile the Democrats and pundits alike as to why  eight per cent Blacks voted for Trump in spite of BLM reaching its crescendo just before the election. What we know so far is that the Black support was due to Trump’s performance vis-à-vis the economy and improved employment among African-Americans. Another reality is that Democrats themselves believed that Black youth are predators.

Trump made significant gains among Latino voters in important States like Texas and Florida. In Democratic strongholds, like Rio Grande Valley region, he got close to 50 per cent Latino votes. The BLM movement consolidated the Latinos around Trump as they predominantly identify themselves as White; also Mexican-American voters are usually conservative. Another aspect that we should not lose sight of is the fact that many Latinos fled from their countries to escape the so-called Marxist utopia run by Left-wing dictators. Among Cuban voters in Florida, Trump had more than 30 per cent lead. These nuances are rarely discussed in a mainstream media.

So far as issues are concerned, Pew Research said that Biden and Trump coalitions fundamentally differ over racial inequality following the killing of George Floyd, with more than 75 per cent Biden supporters agreeing that racial inequality would be a determining factor for their voting behaviour compared to 24 per cent of Trump’s. In spite of Trump polarising and vitiating the climate to an extent, we should not forget that US voters are entrenched in their political beliefs and only outliers can be persuaded to vote otherwise. This becomes even more pronounced in a bi-party system in the US. This election was not as polarising as is made out to be. To put it in perspective, Trump won 58 per cent of the White vote in 2016 and 57 per cent this year. Derek Thompson in The Atlantic argued that this election may be a case of depolarisation and that demography is no longer going to be a path to majority for Democrats. He believed that it is polarisation of place rather than race, as urban areas are getting pro-Democrat whereas rural areas are turning Republican. Regardless of conflicting approaches, for the sake of intellectual honesty, we must acknowledge that in all societies, political behaviour cannot be reduced to catch phrases such as racial/social divide. That would be intellectually naïve and analytically problematic.

(The writer is Professor, Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences, IIT Madras)

When Americans cast their ballot for the President on November 3, they weren’t voting directly for Joe Biden or the incumbent, President Donald Trump, but rather for their State’s electors. In the US, a candidate becomes President by securing the most “electoral” votes rather than by winning a majority of the national popular vote. Electors generally cast their vote for the winner of the popular vote in their respective States. They are slated to meet on December 14 and the winner must get a minimum of 270 votes.

 In case no one receives the minimum prescribed votes, the House of  Representatives elects the President and the Senate elects the Vice-President. The Electoral College and its procedure was established by Article II of the US Constitution and the 12th and the 23rd Constitution Amendments. Though Joe Biden has clearly won and is now the President-elect, the outgoing President has put unsubstantiated charges of electoral fraud and embroiled the process in court cases. Trump’s campaign on November 9 filed a lawsuit in a Pennsylvania federal court, seeking to block State officials from certifying Biden’s victory there.

In any case, the declaration of formal victory will have to wait as the 538 members of the Electoral College will cast their votes on December 14 and the votes will be counted and certified by the Congress in a joint sitting to be held on January 6, 2021 in a session presided over by the Vice-President. The President-elect will be sworn in on January 20, 2021.

The question that agitates the people across the world is why the founding fathers of the US enshrined such a complex electoral system in the Constitution. There are many presidential electoral systems to choose from. For instance, in India — a parliamentary system — the President is elected by an Electoral College comprising the elected members of both the Houses of Parliament and the elected members of the Legislative Assemblies of the States. In France, the President is elected by popular votes based on the two-round election system since 1965, if no candidate wins a majority of the votes in the first round. Many other countries, like Brazil, Bulgaria, Iran, Poland, Russia, Turkey and so on, have the two-round system or second ballot/runoff ballot, if no candidate receives the stipulated number of votes in the first round. Sri Lanka has a variant of the contingent vote system to elect the President. If no candidate receives an overall majority of first preference votes on the first count, then all, but the two leading candidates, are eliminated and their votes redistributed to help determine a winner in a second and final round.

However, the US Presidential electoral system is an amalgamation of popular election — that is popular votes and indirect election — comprising the Electoral College. Alexander Hamilton, one of the main architects of the US Constitution, wrote  in The Federalist Papers about the key advantages of the Electoral College, “The electors come directly from the people and for that purpose only, and for that time only. This avoided a party-run legislature or a permanent body that could be influenced by foreign interests before each election.”  The makers of the Constitution believed that since  the election would take place among all the States, so no corruption in any State could taint “the great body of the people” in their selection. It was also felt  that the “electors’ meeting in the State capitals would be able to have information unavailable to the general public.” Besides, it was argued that “since no federal officeholder could be an elector, none of the electors would be beholden to any presidential candidate.”

Another consideration was that the decision to elect the President by the members of the Electoral College would be made without “tumult and disorder”, as it would be a broad-based one, made simultaneously in various locales where the decision-makers could deliberate reasonably, without threat or intimidation. “If the Electoral College did not achieve a decisive majority, then the House of Representatives was to choose the president....” The Constitution makers were apprehensive about somebody unqualified but with a talent for “low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity” attaining high office, and, therefore, conscientiously struck a novel compromise between the two systems. However, in actual practice, the process of forming the Electoral College has little significance as the voters choose the presidential candidate and his running mate and the winner takes all the votes assigned to a particular State, regardless of any narrow gap in the popular votes secured.

For instance, the State of Georgia is allocated 16 members in the Electoral College. As per the last count (final count awaited), Joe Biden secured 49.5, Trump 49.2 and Jo Jorgensen 1.2 per cent votes. If after the final count, Biden retains the lead, there will be no proportional distribution of the votes secured and all the 16 members thus elected will be of the Democratic candidate led by Joe Biden, giving credence to the dictum the “winner takes it all.”

The States of Maine and Nebraska are two exceptions where, instead of a winner-takes-it all system, the vote goes through what’s known as the “Congressional district method.” This system — used in Maine since 1972 and in Nebraska since 1992 — allocates two electoral votes to the Statewide winner but allows each Congressional district to award one electoral vote to the popular vote winner in its locality. In Maine, this means that two out of four electoral votes can go to someone other than the Statewide winner; in Nebraska, three out of five electoral votes remain in play.

The members of the Electoral College, with rare inconsequential exceptions, do not disregard the popular vote by casting their vote for someone other than the party candidate. They hold, generally, a leadership position in their party or are  trusted party loyalists who will uphold their pledge. A majority of the States have their own laws against faithless electors. Taking the votes on party lines for granted, the rationale of having an Electoral College inspires little confidence as it has become antiquarian and pointless.

Insofar as the federal character of the votes is concerned, that is guaranteed by the number of seats allocated to each of the States and territories, including District Columbia, for the presidential election, based on the twin principles of federalism and population. This is reflected in the composition of the Senate, which has 100 members, two from each State regardless of its size and population and the House of Representatives, comprising 435 members, elected by each of the States and territories. California sends 53 members and smaller States like Delaware have one member.

In 2000, Democrat Al Gore received 50,999,897 votes; Republican George Bush received 50,456,002. In the Electoral College count, however, Bush, who tallied 271 electors to Gore’s 266, became the President. In 2016, Hilary Clinton received 65,853,514 votes to  Donald Trump’s 62,984,828, but Trump got 304 electoral votes and Hillary Clinton 227.

The Electoral College system distorts the campaign as candidates give extra consideration to swing States, often compromising governance, and give over-representation to smaller States. Moreover, till the final count by the Congress, there is a long, eerie silence and speculation about a possible tie. But perhaps the people of the US are happy and content with this.

(The writer is former Additional Secretary, Lok Sabha)

Americans should congratulate themselves. Their election system is definitely better than Ethiopia’s. In fact, it works so well that there’s unlikely to be another American civil war. The US, a federal country with a complex and decrepit voting system, has nevertheless just held a national election despite about a quarter-million of Covid-19 deaths. President Donald Trump is finding it hard to process his defeat, but the system itself worked fine despite the pandemic.

Ethiopia, another federal country with one-third of America’s population but less than one-hundredth of the US’ Covid death rate, should have held its scheduled election this autumn too, but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed postponed it “because of the Coronavirus pandemic.” That was a very serious mistake.

The Government of the Tigray region of Ethiopia accused Abiy of needless delay, and when he refused to change his mind, it went ahead and held the election in Tigray anyway. Abiy said the newly-elected Government of Tigray (same as the old Government) was illegal because he had postponed the elections. On its part, Tigray said the Federal Government was illegal because it had unilaterally extended its mandate instead of holding the elections, and both sides went to war.

In only a week, they’ve worked their way up from local clashes to air strikes. This is so stupid and reckless that it makes US politics look positively demure by comparison. To be fair, though, Ethiopia has only recently emerged from 45 years of revolution, White and Red terror, renewed tyranny, more revolution, and practically non-stop civil and international war. Ethiopia is a really hard place to govern. When Abiy Ahmed was appointed Prime Minister two years ago by the ruling coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), he was the first Oromo ever to govern the country, even though the Oromo are the largest of Ethiopia’s many ethnic groups (a third of the population). They have been unhappy for a long time, so that was a plus.

So was the fact that he was the son of a Christian-Muslim marriage, useful in a country that is two-thirds Christian, one-third Muslim. And Abiy’s intentions were good: He immediately set about to dismantle the stranglehold on power of the various ethnic militias that had fought and won the long war against the Derg, the previous Communist dictatorship. The most powerful of those militias is the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).

Tigray, the country’s northernmost province, has only six million people, a mere five per cent of Ethiopia’s population, but Tigrayan soldiers and politicians have dominated the EPRDF coalition and Government for most of the last 30 years because of their historic role in the war against the Derg.

The Tigrayan political elite’s privilege was widely resented, and it was time for it to end. Last year Abiy tried to do that by merging all the ethnic militia-based parties into a single Prosperity Party, but the TPLF leadership wouldn’t play ball. They had always lived in the castle, and nobody was going to make them go and live with the commoners. It is, alas, as simple as that, and perhaps a more accomplished civilian politician could have finessed it: Cabinet posts, ambassadorships and/or fat lifetime pensions for the more flexible Tigrayan leaders, discreet but massive bribes for the greedier ones, and a couple of fatal “accidents” for the hardest nuts to crack.

Abiy Ahmed, despite a background in Intelligence work that should have given him good political skills, is inflexible and confrontational. The cascade of threats, counter-threats and ultimatums between him and the TPLF leadership is now culminating in what amounts to a Tigrayan war of secession. It could be a long fight because Tigrayans are over-represented in the armed forces and much of the army’s heavy weapons and equipment, which were based in Tigray because of the border war with Eritrea, has fallen into the TPLF’s hands. The TPLF has no air force, but it can match the federal army in everything, up to and including mechanised divisions.

Ethiopia is Africa’s second-biggest country, very poor but with a fast-growing economy. The very last thing it needs is yet another civil war, which in current circumstances could also lead to other regions trying to secede. Even if the TPLF was trying to provoke a war (which looks quite likely), Abiy Ahmed’s first duty was to avoid it at all costs. They gave Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize last year for bringing Ethiopia’s 22-year border war with Eritrea to a formal end but that award has been going downhill ever since Henry Kissinger got one. They even gave one to Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who now goes around condoning genocide. Maybe we also need a Nobel Booby Prize.

(Gwynne Dyer’s new book is ‘Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy and Work’)

If all goes well and President Donald Trump does not have his way in the courts, then on January 20, 2021 the White House would have a new occupant. President Trump will vacate the same to welcome President-elect Democrat Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States of America (POTUS). The US elections this time were followed worldwide because of the impact incumbent President Trump had over global geopolitics with his peculiar style of functioning.

 Though Biden defeated him with a convincing majority, Trump is unhappy and making wild accusations of electoral fraud has approached the courts. In all fairness, Biden will succeed and Trump will have to concede. In the process Trump will be remembered as the first sitting POTUS who failed to secure a second term apart from his numerous controversial decisions. Biden will inherit an extremely divided US, a fallout of the “America First” policy of Trump. Soon, the process of transition will begin when the outgoing administration will hand over power to the transition team of Biden, who, too, will commence the process of announcing his trusted colleagues. The choice of members of his team will be the first indication of the mindset of the new POTUS with relation to burning domestic and global issues. Biden, more than experienced at 77, will not only decide the future of US citizens but would also have the capacity, capability, authority and responsibility to shape global destiny. It is no wonder then that in India as well the election was followed very closely as it has traditionally enjoyed a bipartisan relationship with the US.

Though change of presidency in the US has not made much of a difference in the past irrespective of the party in power, this time the situation is different because of the ongoing stand-off with an expansionist and aggressive China as well as certain controversies at home leading to polarisation.

The nomination of Senator Kamala Harris as a running mate by Biden created a concern in the power corridors in India due to her perceived anti-India stance and critical statements relating to abrogation of Article 370 and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Incidentally, both Biden and Harris have a connection with India but it is highly unlikely that it would have any effect on their policy-making or relations with us. However, one thing is certain, Biden is a friend of India and his track record from his early days as a Senator till his Vice- Presidency under Barack Obama bears testimony to this fact.

Trump has left many problems for the new Government and naturally, Biden will prioritise the sequence and manner in which he decides to resolve them. Going by the Democratic Party Platform (a document akin to manifesto) India is not in the priority list of the party. It refers to China, North Korea, Iran, the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific but does not mention India specifically. However, the Democrats realised soon that ignoring India may cause them loss of critical Indian-American votes and the Biden campaign released a separate policy paper on Indo-US relations. Considering India’s strategic location dominating the Indian Ocean, its size and economy, no Government can afford to ignore it.

Significantly, Biden has always espoused India’s cause in the US and lobbied for its interests as an admirer of the world’s largest democracy. He has also been an advocate of deepening strategic engagement with India, cooperating with New Delhi on meeting global challenges as well as enhancing trade relations. He has remained a strong believer of the fact that India and the US are natural partners and had a stellar role to play in approving the US-India civil nuclear deal in 2008.  It was during the Obama-Biden administration that the US, for the first time, declared its support for the permanent membership of India in an expanded and reformed United Nations Security Council. During the same administration, India was named as a “major defence partner,” making it eligible to be treated at par with closest US allies as regards advanced and sensitive technologies needed to strengthen our armed forces. There are fears that since more than 80 per cent American-Muslims voted in his favour, Biden’s policies may be pro-Muslim. However, any apprehension of the US interfering in Kashmir is highly unfounded as  Biden and Harris have both spoken out against human rights violations and the Democrats have always been supportive of India on Kashmir. Though in his Agenda for Muslim-American Communities, Biden had condemned the Narendra Modi Government’s new citizenship Act and a separate attempt to build a population register that could provide future justification to expel or target foreigners, at the same time he had also committed to strengthening Indo-US ties.

 “The US and India will stand together against terrorism in all its forms and work together to promote a region of peace and stability, where neither China nor any other country threatens its neighbours,” he wrote in an op-ed in an Indian-American newspaper in October. He is unlikely to change the American stance on Al Qaeda, the ISIS and other radical jihadi organisations. Significantly, the Modi Government’s action against many foreign-funded NGOs and banning of Amnesty International has not gone down well with many Democrats. There are bound to be differences of opinion on many issues just like during the Trump Administration, but mutual discussions would ensure that these do not affect the cooperation between the two nations on many critical issues of mutual importance.

China’s expansionist policies, trade and certain global problems like terrorism and climate change are the issues of concern for India. There is no doubt that on these issues the Biden administration and India will have convergence. It is unlikely that Biden will release the pressure built on China by the Trump Administration. But he favours a consensus-based approach in dealing with Beijing as compared to the confrontationist stance adopted by Trump.

 Biden is in favour of strengthening the QUAD, the Indo-Pacific policy as well as providing support to Taiwan and Hong Kong. He wants to strengthen ties with US allies, too, meaning the NATO and countries like Australia, Japan, the Philippines and South Korea, proposing a grand Indo-Pacific Alliance. He has also committed to strengthening military cooperation between the US and India. It is important to note that both nations had signed three agreements for closer military cooperation in the backdrop of the growing tension with China under Trump. Biden has a very different approach to climate change which is likely to benefit India in terms of green funding.

As far as trade is concerned, Biden is going to be less obtrusive than Trump. India already enjoys a trade surplus with the US. It accounts for nearly five per cent of US’ services imports from the world, too. The US is the fifth-largest source of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in India and the Indian stock market is already showing a positive impact like the Wall Street.

There may not be much change in the H1-B visa regime but the information technology industry is likely to benefit. Despite good personal relations between Trump and Modi, the much-awaited trade deal between the two countries could not be finalised. Keeping in view the promised focus of Biden on rebuilding the Covid-hit economy of the US, chances of expecting any concessions appear dim.

Biden, however, had been an advocate of strengthening trade relations and India would expect restoration of the Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) benefits from his Government. However, it remains to be seen if the new administration uses the same as a leverage for its differences on certain issues with the Modi Government. Even Modi expressed the same hope  in his congratulatory message to the President-elect. He tweeted, “As the (Vice President), your contribution to strengthening Indo-US relations was critical and invaluable. I look forward to working closely together once again to take India-US relations to greater heights.”

India has embarked on the path of Atmanirbhar Bharat to meet the challenges of a post-Covid era. Despite temptations and provocations, our nation has so far resisted joining any camp but instead has continued with its strategy of need-based bilateral or multilateral agreements in keeping with its national interests. We must continue on the same path.

(The author is a Jammu-based veteran, political commentator, columnist, security and strategic analyst)

Comedian Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the star of the extremely popular television comedy Seinfeld as well as the show Veep, where she portrays a sidelined US Vice-President, tweeted that the “Madame Vice-President” was not a fictional one anymore as the Joseph Biden Jr-Kamal Harris ticket has, according to the US media, won the presidential elections, even though incumbent Donald Trump is not conceding defeat just yet. So, on January 20, 2021, Kamala Harris will take the oath as the 49th Vice-President of the US, breaking not just a barrier for women but also for Americans of colour, being the child of a Jamaican father and a Tamilian mother. We do not know what sort of Vice-President she will be. In years past, we have seen some like George Bush Senior and Karl Rove effectively run the show for their leaders, but over the years, many have been completely sidelined by their Presidents. Famously, when Harry Truman ascended to the top job in 1944 after the death of Franklin Roosevelt, he had no clue of most of America’s strategic initiatives in World War II, including the Manhattan Project that was developing the atomic bomb. Truman was the man who unleashed the power of the weapon on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. One can assume that Harris might have a greater role than the “typical” Vice-President but as the Democratic establishment chooses the next Cabinet, what that role will be remains to be seen. However, given early indications of Biden’s declining mental acuity evident in some of his speeches and certain to be a favourite of America’s acerbic late-night television hosts, the next four years could be an audition for the top job for Harris herself.

Make no mistake, the 2020 US presidential election was mighty close and when the last votes are counted and certified, Biden would have won the overall popular vote substantially. But Trump also increased the number of votes he got. In addition, he just about lost Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. So unless Biden can get the virus under control, revive the economy and keep China in check, there is no certainty that Biden or Harris will win the next election. In India, we are celebrating that one of our own, sort of, is in a position of power, but Harris’ first job is repairing a deeply divided US. That won’t be easy, but if she can add a healing touch, she might make a run for the top job sooner rather than later.

1801 is a landmark year in the proud traditions of American democracy. It was the first time a political party handed over power to its rival and marked the first peaceful transfer — an important precedent in the global experiment with democracy. The second US President John Adams made way for Thomas Jefferson and slipped out of the then still-under-construction White House in the wee hours of the morning. The run-up to the elections had witnessed a bitterly polarised campaign that played out in the partisan Press, and Adams had controversially made key judicial appointments before the elections, just as Donald Trump had done. While Adams did not show grace in attending his successor’s inauguration, the subsequent traditions that evolved institutionalised the civility and formality of procedures pertaining to the transfer of power.

In the 2016 US presidential elections, the shocking defeat of Hillary Clinton, despite having three million more popular votes than her rival Donald Trump, upheld those democratic tenets when she graciously accepted in her concessional speech that “Donald Trump is going to be our President. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead. Our constitutional democracy enshrines the peaceful transfer of power. We don’t just respect that. We cherish it. It also enshrines the rule of law; the principle we are all equal in rights and dignity; freedom of worship and expression.” Despite Trump’s extremely personal, vile and often false accusations against his predecessor, Barack Obama, and his previous presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, both dignified the American dream and the institution of democracy by attending and abiding by all the transfer procedural formalities.

The founding father of the American democracy, who adopted and ratified its hallowed Constitution, George Washington, had sensed the inherent dangers of a roguish individual or party, who could potentially diminish the cherished democratic values. He had warned, “However, (political parties) may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of Government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” One such looming danger today is the unprecedented digging in the heels by Trump, who seemingly has thrown caution to the winds and refused to accept the electoral verdict, with the expected behaviour of a defeated candidate in a participative democracy. Anarchical portents loom and Trump, who has the dubious distinction of making at least 20,000 recorded lies in his presidential tenure, has inelegantly put his personal vanity and incorrigibility over the desideratum of democracy.

Trump’s toxic rhetoric preceding his electoral defeat had a definite pattern that clearly suggested that he was not going to bow out very easily. Murmurs about Trump rejecting the electoral results over one manufactured reason or the other were building up. What makes the ground situation frightening is the extremely divided, polarised and militant electorate and groups who harbour supremacism, racism and extremism that just need a nudge and wink to explode. The nation is awash with private firearms and “armies” amid societal faultlines that have further opened up with protest rallies and expressions of violence.

The International Crisis Group (ICG), whose purpose is to sound alarm against any foreseen conflict, war or societal unrest, had for the first time looped in the US presidential elections 2020, by noting, “Trump himself has refused to commit to leaving the office peacefully, and suggested that he could lose only if the election was rigged.” The second warning issued by the ICG was to avoid projecting a winner until the outcome was certain. Almost on cue, Trump did exactly what was feared — the sore loser claimed that rivals were “stealing” his mandate and he himself had announced his victory prematurely, when he tweeted, “We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election” and later added, “I will be making a statement tonight. A big win.”

Veteran Senator Bernie Sanders had prophesied the exact script that Trump was likely to follow knowing that the counting of mail-in ballots would tilt the scales in favour of Joe Biden. Hence Bernie suggested that Trump could say, “Thank you, Americans, for re-electing me. It’s all over. Have a good day.” However, Trump did say so and much more.

The fact that Trump still managed to retain a substantial, loyal and angry voter base, despite his gross mismanagement of the Covid-19 pandemic, societal disharmony and after alienating almost all global allies, should concern all democracies about the sticky power of hatred, illiberality and undemocratic propulsions, even in those countries which overtly pride on being called, “democracies.” A timely lesson for democratic nations is to eschew dangerous passions, inflammatory expressions and erosion of the constitutional spirit, as these unleash an authoritarian streak of “muscular politics” which might appeal to the basic instincts in the short term but eventually play havoc with the nation, in the long term.

When the national discourse becomes dangerously aggressive, divisive and political parties no longer seek to defeat the “ideas” of opposition but to “destroy” them, the stakes for reciprocal animus and vengeance set in. This attitude ultimately breeds the sort of politics that wants to win at any cost, by hook or by crook. As the Trump saga suggests, the foreboding signals are unmistakable when the supposedly apolitical institutions start getting compromised, political language becomes intolerant and intimidating, or when falsehood becomes normalised and preferred over the more sobering reality. Only time will tell if Trump can ever match his fellow Republican John McCain’s brilliant concession speech in 2008, “Tonight, more than any night, I hold in my heart nothing but love for this country and for all its citizens, whether they supported me or Senator Obama, and I wish Godspeed to the man who was my former opponent and will be my President.”

(The writer, a military veteran, is a former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands)