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By:Asad Mirza
American President Donald Trump on Wednesday became the third U.S. president (The first two, Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton, were both acquitted. Another president, Richard Nixon, resigned rather than face impeachment and trial.), to be impeached as the House of Representatives formally charged him with abuse of power and obstruction of Congress in a historic step.
Trump has been impeached on charges that he abused his power in office and obstructed Congress during the impeachment investigation.
Democrats accuse Trump of pressurising Ukraine to start an investigation into Trump’s political rival and former vice president, Joe Biden, who is also a frontrunner in the 2020 Democratic presidential race. They also charge that Trump obstructed their investigation by refusing to comply with subpoenas and directing members of his administration to do the same.
The impeachment inquiry, launched in September following a whistle-blower complaint, was centred on a July 25 phone call during which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to open an investigation into Biden and his son, Hunter, who had served on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. At the time of the call, the Trump administration was withholding nearly $400m in Congress-approved military assistance to Ukraine. There has been no evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
A two-thirds majority vote is required in the 100-member Senate to convict and remove a president from office. A conviction appears unlikely in the case of Trump. The Senate is made up of 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents, who vote with the Democrats. At least 20 Republicans would have to vote with all Democrats and the two independents to remove the president from office.
Trump, who is seeking another four-year term in the November 2020 presidential election, has denied wrongdoing and called the impeachment inquiry launched by House of representative’s Speaker Nancy Pelosi in September a “witch hunt.”
Impeachment is a remedy devised by the United States’ founders, wary of a monarch on American soil after breaking away from Britain and King George III in the 18th century, to enable Congress to remove a president who has committed “high crimes and misdemeanours.”
Political analysts feel that with the latest episode the Republican Party now will not be known as the Party of Lincoln but the Party of Trump that lost its bearings and its soul to defend a narcissist. Psychologists and sociologists will study a masscult phenomenon, seeking to explain how the accomplices duped millions of Americans.
Political commentators and analysts in the US are of the view that US was supposed to be a country which in theory has been “dedicated to the proposition” of liberty and equality, but which in practice has always fallen short. From the endorsement of slavery in the constitution through the Chinese Exclusion Act and up to the torture at Guantánamo Bay, the achievement of the American ideal has been prevented by systemic and structural – not superficial – problems. And yet, that ideal has endured.
This ideal had endured due to the country’s system of government, consisting of– the presidency, Congress, the system of federalism and the supreme court – which too have often been the engines of injustice, but they have also proven their ability to stamp it out if the excesses went to the extreme.
But rarely has there been a president like Trump, who treats America’s institutions and electoral processes with such contempt that he constitutes not just a failure of American promise but poses an existential threat to it.
The Trump impeachment also has lessons to be learnt for our political leadership. American lawmakers have shown (and public too may show in next year’s elections) that they will not tolerate a narcissist person to lead them, who is hell bent on undermining the institutions and trying to change everything from the constitution to text books, just in order to implement a completely right-wing ideology in a secular country.
People in India have already started questioning the political establishment for its half-baked ideas instead of focussing on issues like the economic slowdown, high level of unemployment, surging prices, and farmer’s distress. Instead it is hell bent on trying to further its own flawed and questionable political agenda and ideology.
Demonstrating Indians can take heart from the fact that if the high and mighty American president can be questioned and brought to justice, then other leaders, who act and behave, like Trump will also have to answer for their wrong policies and actions, sooner or later.
Satyamev Jayate.
