President Donald Trump is a conman and like all conman he promised one thing and delivered something else.
In the 2016 elections, the then Donald Trump promised the American votes two things:
To drain the Washington swamp (Many people felt as soon as the elections were over, the Washington ruling elite forgot about the voters)
To put America first. (True or not, it is nice to blame some one else for ones’ problems.)
Enough Americans believed him and voted him into office.
It did not take before the real reason why Trump had wanted to be President began to emerge; he was a megalomania. Forget about putting America first, that would be a bonus, his number one priority was putting Donald Trump first.
Trump promised to drain the Washington political swamp only to shamelessly muddy its waters even more for selfish again. When Richard Milhous Nixon cheated in the Watergate Scandal to further his political ambition he claimed, tongue in the check, “I am not a crook!”
When the truth emerged that President Trump had tried to arm twist Ukrainian leaders and many others to dig some dirty on his political challenger, Joe Biden; President Trump’s cheeky response was, “I am a crook! So what!”
President Trump should have been impeached or forced to resign. He was never impeached although the House of Representatives voted for him to be impeached but only because the Senate was controlled by Republicans, his party. A very partisan stance that has made the Washington swamp notoriously dysfunctional and which many Republicans would come to regret.
Nothing will ever encapsulate Trump’s “Trump first!” ethos more than his stubborn refusal to accept he had lost the November 2020 elections. He ordered the counting to stop for no good reason other than that he was losing.
Trump has maintained the elections were fraudulent and lounged 60 court challenges but they have all been thrown out for lack of evidence.
Even in a Republican controlled State like Georgia Trump claimed the election was rigged. Republicans cheating to benefit the Democrats, their opponents!
On 6 th January 2021 a group of President Trump die-hard supporters stormed, military style, Capitol Hill, the citadel of American Federal power, housing the Representatives and Senators, the highest ranking elected public officials in the land after the President. The mob had one purpose in mind - to stop the joint houses of Representatives and Senators from carrying out their constitutional duty of formally endorsing the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as the winners of the November 2020 Presidential and Vice Presidential race.
The violent mob attacking Capitol Hill were a blatant attached on the people’s right to a free vote, the people’s free vote as the only mandate to govern and on the long established tradition of a peaceful and orderly transfer of power.
As a Zimbabwean, the 6 January 2021 events in Washington was a reminder of the events in Zimbabwe in March 2008. Zanu PF was losing the vote and the party ordered the vote counting to stop and the counting stopped.
It took the next six weeks for the party to cook up new results. MDC’s parliamentary majority was reduced and Tsvangirai’s 73% vote count, by Mugabe’s own Freudian slip, was reduced to 47% - enough to force a presidential run-off.
In the three months run-off election campaign, Zanu PF unleashed the worst election related wanton violence the country had ever seen. The party was punishing the voters for daring to reject the party’s presidential candidate, Robert Mugabe, in the earlier vote.
“Zanu PF has declared war on the people!” said Tsvangirai as he announced his forced withdrawal from the run-off. The wanton violence had been so intense it was impossible for him to campaign.
Mnangagwa, before him Mugabe, and his fellow Zanu PF thugs conned the people of Zimbabwe’s promises of freedom, liberty, “One man! One vote!” etc., etc. before independence. All the black nationalists wanted and cared about is absolute power for themselves and their greed for power and the spoils it brings have been insatiable.
Mnangagwa has succeed in gratifying his hunger for power because Zimbabwe is a Banana Republic in tyrants like him hold captive the state institutions and ride roughshod over the people freedoms and rights. President Donald Trump tried to do the same and has failed because America has a healthy and functioning democracy.
6th January 2021 will go down in history as the first occasion ever in 226 years America has failed to have peaceful and orderly transfer of power. But most important of all, the event will go down in history as an attempt to usurp the people’s power and right to free, fair and credible elections that completely failed.
Mugabe and his Zanu PF thugs usurped the people’s freedoms and rights when the party denied the people a free vote in 1980. The 2008 elections are a watershed elections in that the party showed the sickening depths the regime would sink to retain power.
There is no denying that President Trump caused a lot of damage to America’s democracy after 4 years in White House. Imagine how much more damage he would have caused if he had enjoyed absolute power for 40 years, which is what Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF cronies have enjoyed!
Mnangagwa and company are corrupt, ruthless thugs whose hunger for power and looted wealth is insatiable. After 40 years of enjoying absolute power, removing from office is not going to be easy. However, they are breathtakingly incompetent, their Achilles heel!
President Trump’s “Trump first!” ethos was doomed to fail because he was foolish enough to think himself, even as President of America, was above the law. In the Banana Republic of Zimbabwe, the thugs are the law unto themselves the challenge is to dismantle the lawless dictatorship!
Sir John Bell, regius professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, says there is a “big question mark” over the new South African strain of coronavirus.
ReplyDeleteSouth Africa recently detected a new aggressive variant of the coronavirus which might be different from the one detected in the United Kingdom.
It is pleasing to see that SA has managed to retain its technological know-how unlike some countries that lost that a few years after independence!
@MDC “The forced migration crisis at Beitbridge border post is a manifestation of a
ReplyDeletelongstanding crisis of governance in Zimbabwe. While people move from
country to country throughout the world, the Zimbabwe-South Africa migration is driven largely by chronic unemployment and increasing poverty in Zimbabwe which is directly connected to the failure of political governance.
“This crisis of governance emanates from flawed electoral processes that have resulted in performance illegitimacy and sheer incompetence by a regime that is pre-occupied with corruption and elite accumulation.”
Please tells something we really want to know like why MDC A failed to implement even one meaningful reforms during the 2008 to 2013 GNU when they had the golden opportunity to do so?
Why has MDC A been participating in flawed elections only to complain after the fact?
Can you deny that MDC A is NOT going to participate in the coming elections regardless of the fact no reforms have been implemented?
Zimbabwe’s economic meltdown is not only Zanu PF’s doing but that of MDC A too.
President Ramaphosa was being asked to call it as it is - that the July 2018 elections are free, fair and credible elections. By claiming the elections went well he gave legitimacy to an illegitimate regime. All those who had condemned the elections process and were trying to put pressure on Zanu PF to stop rigging elections had the rug pulled from under their feet!
ReplyDeletePRESIDENT Emmerson Mnangagwa says ugly scenes witnessed on the US Capitol grounds in Washington Wednesday were signs the superpower had no moral authority to police other nations’ democracies.
ReplyDeleteViolent scenes erupted in the US capital Wednesday when hordes of outgoing President Donald Trump’s Republican supporters rioted and breached the halls of Congress as elected officials were beginning to certify Joe Biden’s presidential election win.
They gained access to the floor of the Senate, setting off an armed standoff with law enforcement in the House of Representatives.
At least four people died during the skirmishes while 52 were arrested as the rowdy crowd attempted to block the process.
“Last year, President Trump extended painful economic sanctions placed on Zimbabwe, citing concerns about Zimbabwe’s democracy. Yesterday’s events showed that the U.S. has no moral right to punish another nation under the guise of upholding democracy. These sanctions must end,” said Mnangagwa.
Mnangagwa has the wrong end of the stick, the violence in Washington was caused by hooligans trying to subvert the people’s democratic will. The Trump hooligans failed.
The violence in Zimbabwe is caused by Zanu PF hooligans subverting the people’s democratic will. The Zanu PF hooligans succeeded.
America is a healthy and functioning democracy and has been for the last 226 years! Zimbabwe is a one-party dictatorship and has been for the last 40 years and counting.
The sanctions on Zimbabwe must stay. Indeed, the sanctions must be reviewed with the intention of laser focusing them and to include such opportunists politicians like Professor Mthuli Ncube and opposition leaders leader Chamisa and Biti who are working with the regime and/or giving it legitimacy.
Trump’s barbarism has backfire alright, most of the 74 million who voted for him in November 2020 must be breathing a sigh of relief he did not win. His stubborn refusal to accept that he lost the elections on the basis of claims the elections were rigged without ever producing a shred of evidence was rubbing many people the wrong way. But by encouraging his hardcore supporters to invade Capitol Hill, Trump crossed the red line.
ReplyDeleteIt is not that people do not make mistakes in a democracy, they do. On voting for Trump back in November 2016, the Americans made a big mistake. The beauty and strength of a healthy and functioning democracy is the mistake is never a catastrophic one and people will learn from their mistake, correct it and emerge stronger for it.
The people of Zimbabwe did not exactly make a mistake in 1980 since that election was not free, fair and credible. Mugabe and his cronies made it clear that if Zanu PF did not win the election the civil war would continue. And so the people voted to end the civil war, or so they thought.
Ever since Zanu PF got into power in 1980 the party has waged a war in one form or another on the people to establish and retain the de facto one-party dictatorship we have lived under ever since.
If Trump was able to have so much influence in 4 years people can imagine how much more influence he would have had if he had been in power for 40 years! Well our Trump tyrants in the Banana Republic of Zimbabwe have been in office for 40 years and enjoyed absolute power; removing them from office is not going to be a walk in the park!
Rejoining the Commonwealth and seeking the removal of illegal economic sanctions imposed on Zimbabwe, principally by the United States (US) and her allies, are the top priorities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Trade this year.
ReplyDeleteSince assuming office in November 2017, the Second Republic under President Mnangagwa has made strides in engaging and re-engaging with the rest of the world to foster socio-economic development, democracy and peaceful coexistence to eradicate poverty
Zimbabwe's foreign policy endeavours to advance the country's policy objectives on the global arena. The New Dispensation is making strides in promoting engagement with rest of the world and promoting economic diplomacy.
The Government will prioritise rejoining the Commonwealth as a launchpad to unlock international goodwill and sustain re-engagement milestones already realised through resumption of political dialogue with international blocs such as the European Union (EU). It is envisaged that rejoining the Commonwealth will fast track the resolution and ratification of the outstanding Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) , as well as launch bids to host internationally-accredited global events and conferences
The Banana Republic Zimbabwe has been making “strides in engaging and re-engaging the rest of the world to foster socio-economic development, democracy and peaceful coexistence to eradicate poverty” for the last three years and yet has nothing to show for it. The country is sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss and despair.
By blatantly rigging the 2018 elections Mnangagwa confirmed that Zimbabwe was still a pariah state ruled by corrupt, incompetent and vote rigging thugs. Rigging the election was the final nail in the coffin of his “Zimbabwe is open for business!” mantra. No one in his/her right mind would ever want to do business in a pariah state, certainly not the shrewd investors.
The corona virus has been a serious health and economic challenge the world over but it has hit Zimbabwe very hard given the country was already in the gutter at the beginning of the pandemic. Zanu PF’s attempt to hide its blundering incompetence in the the handling of the pandemic has only made the situation even worse.
Officially Zimbabwe has one of the lowest corona virus cases and deaths per capita in the world but this is so because of the Zanu PF regime’s, like the Chinese, obsession with being secretive. At least, the Chinese have taken the bull by the horns and contain the virus. Zanu PF has under reported the virus and by so doing allowed infected people who would otherwise be in isolation to remain in society spreading the virus far and wide.
Last week the regime finally admitted the nation’s hospitals were being overwhelmed by corona virus patients. It was a tacit admission that the official figure of 2 254 active cases was nonsense! The chickens had finally come home to roost.
There are thousands of Zimbabweans leaving the country to escape growing poverty and there will be many more to follow. Zimbabwe is now unstable and is destabilising the whole region. The solution is for Zimbabwe to implement the democratic reforms designed to end the curse of rigged elections and pariah state.
All pressure from SADC and the international community must be brought to bear on Mnangagwa and his Zanu PF to implement the reforms. The targeted sanctions on the regime must be extended to include those working for the regime like Professor Mthuli Ncube and those selling-out on reforms like the opposition leaders.
@ D Muleya
ReplyDeleteSecond, Trump’s rule demonstrated authoritarianism, powered by Hitlerite populism, can emerge anywhere in the world. Not many would have imagined the US appearing like a Third World country during elections. Even by standards of dictatorial nations, the conduct of Trump’s supporters was a new low.
“Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, and his pressure tactics to that end with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, are an example of how authoritarianism works in the 21st century,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: From Mussolini to the Present.
“Today’s leaders come in through elections and then manipulate elections to stay in office — until they get enough power to force the hand of legislative bodies to keep them there indefinitely, as (Vladmir) Putin and (Viktor) Orban have done.”
When Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt published How Democracies Die, in 2018, warning the US could slide into autocracy, they got a serious backlash.
“We were criticised by some as alarmist,” Ziblatt, a professor at Harvard University, said. “It turns out we weren’t alarmist enough.”
In the end, this should not have come as a surprise to anyone who watched and followed Trump over the past four years. He foreshadowed his plans to challenge the election as invalid unless he won.
Third, the election exposed flaws of the US electoral system. Lessons can be drawn from that. Fourth, the chaos and rioting – leaving four dead – compromised the US’s ability to speak out on polls in other countries.
As British professor Nic Cheeseman said: “This weakens the moral authority of the US to speak out on other countries’ elections and that will embolden dictators around the world”.
Fifth, which is the biggest lesson, especially for Zimbabwe and other African countries, it is important to have strong democratic institutions that will not be manipulated or abused by dictators when they lose power. Trump tried and failed to cling onto power due to resilient institutions.
As Biden said, democratic institutions saved and steered the US through “one of the darkest days in the history of our nation”.
This is what Zimbabwe and other African nations, indeed authoritarian states elsewhere, need: entrenched, strong democratic institutions to limit power and contain power-mongering dictators, especially when they lose elections.
Where institutions are solid – not fragile, no one can use the electoral commission, public service, police, intelligence services, and the army to help them to rig and steal elections, overturn the people’s will or hang onto power by hook or crook.
This must be the biggest takeaway from the US elections for Zimbabwe, which badly needs democratic reform to hold credible, free and fair elections, hopefully leading to change for the better – not more of the same.
The challenge for Zimbabwe is how to wrestle the state institutions like the ZEC, Police, Army, etc. which are now nothing but Zanu PF departments in all but name.
We needed to implement democratic reforms to wrestling these state institutions from the corrupting clutch of Zanu PF. And the best opportunity to implement the reforms fell to MDC leaders during the 2008 to 2013 GNU. Sadly, they sold-out big time and failed to implement even one reform.
Zimbabwe is not going anywhere until we implement the reforms and thus end the curse of rigged elections.