19 January 2021 12:10 am
Tomorrow will be a historic day and hopefully the beginning of a new era in the United States and the democratic world. Amid the tightest ever security in Washington-- with some 25,000 National Guard troops providing security for the Capitol Hill or the House of Congress--former Vice President and Senator Joe Biden will be sworn in as the New President of the US. At 78, he will be the oldest President of the US. Also being sworn in as Vice President will be Kamala Harris, the first coloured woman to hold this high post and she is likely to play a key role in ushering in the new era of unity in diversity.
We have been told that a calamity or catastrophe is often followed by a blessing. The Biden-Harris era is another example of this. It comes after the disaster of the era of Donald Trump--widely regarded as the most dangerous President in US history with the Washington Post recently giving the text of about 30,000 lies that Mr. Trump had told during his four years in office. These included one of the last and most dangerous lies that the November 3 Presidential election was robbed from him.
When the US Senate and the House of Representatives met on January 6 in a special joint session to certify the results of the November 3 Presidential Election Mr. Trump called on white racists mobs and other hard-line white supremacist groups to come to Washington. He addressed them and incited the angry crowd to storm Capitol Hill and stop to the certification of the election results.
Apparently acting on his incitement, the crowd staged what is called a Coup Klux Klan. They stormed the House of Congress and tried to stage an insurrection by killing or harming the Speaker and Mr Trump’s own Vice President Mike Pence who was presiding at the session. The leaders were saved by the Secret Service and other law enforcement officers who took them to a safe area. Among the wild mob were two members who discredited and brought disgrace to the citadel of US democracy. One of them sat on Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chair, put his feet on her table and went away after leaving a threatening note for her. The other sat on the Vice President’s chair. White House Journalists say Mr. Trump watched with glee, while these white racists mobs tried to stage the insurrection. He did not try to stop it but instead sent a tweet, describing them as “patriots who loved the country”. Now, though long-delayed, both Twitter and Facebook have banned Mr. Trump while the House of Representatives impeached him last Wednesday. He had earlier been impeached last year also, but the Senate did not convict him because it had a Republican majority and there was no chance of getting a two-thirds majority for the conviction. It is the first time in US history that a President has been impeached twice in his first four-year term. The Senate was scheduled to meet yesterday and this time it is not clear when it will take up the conviction process or whether a two-thirds majority could be mustered to convict Mr. Trump on the charge of inciting an attempted insurrection largely by racists mobs. Anyway, Mr. Trump will be out of office by tomorrow and most analysts believe that whether the Senate acts or does not act to convict him, he is likely to face charges in courts of law. The charges are likely to include high crimes and misdemeanours--charges that could send him to jail.
So much so for populism, inconsistent policies and pathological lies which had made him the idol of his base comprising mainly white racists and isolated the US from its free world allies.
From tomorrow, most analysts believe the Biden-Harris administration will take effective steps to end the COVID-19 pandemic by ensuring an equitable distribution of vaccines and appealing to the people to wear masks, maintain physical distancing, do regular handwashing with soap and water while also using sanitisers. The Biden-Harris administration is also likely to take effective measures to end white racists supremacist extremism while bringing about racial equality and social justice, first in the US and then encourage it in the rest of the democratic world.