Ceylon Today Editorial

Don’t ignore the majority

10 November 2016

The message by Donald Trump's seemingly surprising electoral victory at Tuesday's US presidential election is, don't ignore the voice of the majority. One of Trump's clarion calls in his now successful bid to the White House was his anti-immigration policy and protectionism.

As a commentator on CNN said yesterday, i.e. at Trump's victory speech at New York City, 'Trump has sought to build a wall, whereas 37 years to the day (9 November 1989), the Berlin Wall came down.' Trump in his election campaign has vowed to build a wall separating the USA from its southern neighbour Mexico, to prevent illegal migration.

On the aspect of the 'Berlin Wall, immigration and another surprising vote, namely Brexit', which took place five months earlier in June, it may be moot to quote what a German diplomat recently had to say about this subject: Germany's Deputy Chief of Mission in Colombo Dr. Michael Dohmen speaking at the Sri Lanka-Germany Business Council AGM on Tuesday said that according to reports, the reason behind the 'Brexit' vote was the fear of migrants.

It was, apparently this same fear among Americans, particularly white Americans, who comprise the bulk of USA's population, that may have had propelled Trump, a novice in politics, to be elected to the high seat of becoming USA's forty-fifth president on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Dohmen in his speech in Colombo, also made on Tuesday, coinciding with the day that the US Presidential elections were held, said that East Europeans in particular were taking British jobs, which propelled 'Brexit'.

Most of these East European jobs in the UK, are blue collar jobs, such as drivers and even as housemaids (!), a noun which is quite common to Sri Lanka as housemaids play no mean a part in making remittances, Sri Lanka's largest foreign exchange earner.

Similarly, working class whites, previously ignored by former US presidential candidates (for fear of upsetting the minority vote), was nevertheless reached out to by Trump, who finally triumphed, by not being afraid of going against the norm.

Meanwhile, Dohmen, in his 'further' analysis of 'Brexit,' said that that was the outcome as a result of East Europeans stealing British jobs, notwithstanding the fact that the British Court recently ruled that the pro-Brexit referendum vote also needed to be sanctioned by Parliament.

And, on the dominant anti-immigrant voice not only in the UK, but now, also in the USA, and the possibility of such a voice gathering steam in Germany, the world's fourth largest economy (after the USA, China and Japan) and possibly impacting German investments in the island as a result (Sri Lanka also enjoys trade surpluses with the USA, UK and Germany).

Dohmen seemingly pooh-poohed such fears, indicating that the anti-immigrant voice in Germany was confined to a small right wing base emanating from the geographical area that earlier was the German Democratic Republic, a Soviet satellite State, which was coopted into Greater Germany (the then German Federal Republic), which was on the western side of the Berlin Wall, after the events of November 1989.  Dohmen, however, referring to the Hitlerian past of Germany, inferred that Berlin was sensitive to the country's past, in respect of the rise of the German right.

Nonetheless, if there was any racism in Trump's campaign, he never repeated such utterances in his victory speech, when he said that he will be the President of all Americans, whilst thanking all, regardless of race or religion, for voting for him.

Nevertheless, the lesson for Colombo from the recent happenings in the West, beginning with 'Brexit' and seemingly continuing (not ending), whatever Dohmen may say, though he admitted to the rapid rise of the far right movement in France (which is anti-immigrant) in the last 10 years, is not to be insensitive to the voice of the majority.

It may have been this seeming insensitivity of the Ranil Wickremesinghe Government of 2004, which was then walking a tightrope, policing a fragile ceasefire with the Tamil terrorist leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, while at the same time seemingly ignoring the majoritarian Sinhala fears, a race that comprises 75% of the island's population, that led to his defeat at that parliamentary poll, despite getting economic indicators, like low inflation, a low interest rate regime, etc., right.

Daily News Editorial

Tr(i)ump

10 November 2016

So, America did not get its first woman President, after all, with a maverick real estate mogul, Reality Show star and a complete stranger to politics ending the white house dreams of Hillary Clinton in a mind boggling reversal of electoral fortunes that has stunned the world.

Donald Trump had to brave severe odds to achieve the feat, with the entire Washington establishment and the media ranged against him. Even Republican senators and stalwarts such as Paul Ryan abandoned him in the face of widespread criticism of his brash and abrasive manner and a string of scandals that did not resonate with conservative values.

Trump’s was an uphill task from the beginning of his nomination with commentators backed by a highly partisan media declaiming that the tycoon lost the White House race the day he won the nomination on the Republican ticket. Their assessments were not far-fetched, with the Republican White House hopeful turning out to be a loose cannon, pledging to deport immigrants en masse and calling Mexicans, who formed a sizable Latino vote, rapists and murderers.

He also did not endear himself to the women voters, or so it seemed, with the outbreak of the ‘groping’ scandal and the vituperative jibes he made at his Democratic rival that was thought to have outraged the female voters that comprised 53 per cent of the American electorate. Above all, his non-conformist posturing was seen to have alienated the conservatives that formed the core of the Republican support base. All these factors cumulatively taken gave Trump no chance from the word go - or so it was portrayed by the media pundits and commentators.

However, what these critics failed to reckon with was the anger and disillusionment of a large swathe of the American electorate with the political establishment and Wall Street shenanigans. These segments felt left out in the scheme of things and wanted to break away with the system.

In Donald Trump they saw an “outsider” untainted by establishment politics. He represented the chance for a clean break and a whole new order. What he said or did mattered little.

The US election also laid bare the peculiarities of the American electorate. It was taken for granted that the black American and the Hispanic vote would go overwhelmingly to Clinton together with the female vote, which alone it was thought, would fell Trump. However the polls showed a different picture. Hitherto traditional “Blue” states such as Pensylvania, and North Carolina with a huge non-white population and white collar workers who vote Domocrat, went “Red” this time around which demonstrated that a large subterranean vote had gone Trump’s way.

The frustration of the blue collar workers, who saw their jobs taken away from them by China and others, an issue which was drummed up stridently by Trump, also turned the tide against the Democratic candidate notwithstanding her pledges to empower the middle class Americans. The surfacing once again of the private E-mail issue of Hillary Clinton, although thought to have died down after the FBI dropped its investigations, also had its impact on the chances of Clinton.

But the biggest casualty in the November 8 American Presidential Election, apart from Hillary Clinton of course, is the polls industry in the US whose credibility now lie in tatters after, from the very inception projecting a runaway victory for Clinton. This is reminiscent of the Brexit polls forecasts which stated that the UK would remain in the EU. All exit polls in the early voting gave Clinton a victory and even on the eve of the election the Democratic candidate was supposed to be leading by a clear margin.

With the rancour and bitterness of a “dirty” election campaign now behind the contenders, Trump was magnanimous in victory, receiving the congratulations of his vanquished opponent warmly and with appropriate words of his own. There is therefore no chance of Hillary Clinton being “locked up” as he threatened to do during the second Presidential debate. Trump blamed the whole system as crooked and hinted at one point that he might not be accepting the results of an election under a “rigged” system.

Be that as it may, what will Trump’s victory mean for the world, for there is plenty on his plate at present? How will he tackle the IS menace and the Syrian catastrophe? He is already on record saying that he will work closely with Putin of Russia, the latter himself wishing for a Trump victory. Clinton in her Presidential debate stated that she intends setting up a No Fly zone in Syria which critics said was fraught with danger with Russian planes bombarding Syrian territory occupied by IS fighters. Will Trump, jointly with Putin, come up with a solution that would put a halt to the human tragedy in that part of the world? What will be the Asian policy of the new President elect? Will there be a deviation from the Asia “Pivot” of Barack Obama? How will the election of the new President affect Sri Lanka’s relations with the US?

The Island Editorial

Hail, Trump!

10 November 2016

It was America’s Brexit moment. Donald trumped Hillary Clinton’s Democratic leviathan which was backed by media moguls and Wall Street to the hilt and secured the much-coveted US presidency.

Trump was demonised by his opponents and the media in such a way that even the people in far away countries thought his election would precipitate the Apocalypse. No sooner had the polling got underway in the US than the prospect of a Trump victory jolted Asian markets, which had expected an easy Clinton win. Those who panicked will have to come to terms with reality and face a world with Trump as the US President.

It was a case of ‘Trump vs the Rest’ with all US and western corporate media besides web publications and opinion makers ganging up against him. Even CNN and prestigious publications like The New York Times stood accused of being partial to Clinton. What Trump has won is not an election as such but a propaganda war of Goebbelisian proportion. Not all key Republicans threw their weight behind him; some of them even campaigned hard against him, calling him names. Even international figures such as UNHRC Chief Zeid Hussein, who should not get involved in the political affairs of UN member states, campaigned against him openly. A beleaguered Trump has won against all of them.

Trump was given several nasty sobriquets including racist, misogynist, bigot and fanatic early in the race and they would have demoralised any other candidate. Do the election results indicate that Americans have endorsed the negative attributes Trump was said to possess? No! Desperate for a leader to hoist their country from the morass it finds itself in, they were left with no alternative. Whether Trump will be able to play the messianic role as promised and live up to their expectations remains to be seen.

The entire American system was loaded in favour of Clinton. Even the mighty FBI buckled under pressure; it had to lift the so-called email scandal cloud in time for the polls to ensure that her interests would not be adversely affected. If Bernie Sanders, the best candidate in the race, had received that kind of backing he would have been able to beat Trump.

Those who strove to defeat Trump made a fatal mistake. They underestimated the power of the conservative white America, which has proved that it is still a force to be reckoned with by propelling the man of its choice to victory.

Americans needed a US president to solve their problems and not a President of the World, as it were, to get involved in engineering regime changes in developing countries to the neglect of national priorities. Trump promised to stay maniacally focused on domestic affairs and building the economy without being distracted by exporting democracy to the rest of the world. Americans knew if Clinton won, she would be another leader like Barack Obama. They voted for Trump.

One of the biggest challenges before Trump will be to make America, characterised by the gung-ho zeal of a gunslinger, less arrogant and more tolerant. He, in spite of his rhetoric, seems to have realised the need to rebuild America and recast its image. If the US solves its own problems without being a problem to other countries, it will help solve most of the problems the world is faced with.

It is hoped and prayed that the sobering political reality will have a mellowing effect on Trump and he will prove his critics wrong by conducting himself responsibly. He, no doubt, has to fulfil his pledges ‘to make America great again’, but some of his promises are best left unfulfilled if he is to win over the voters, mostly minorities, who did not back him. After all, he has declared, in his victory speech, he is the President of all Americans.