A Dangerous Election !

 On the other side of the word a political drama is being played out in Belarusia where president  Alexander Lukashenko claims to have achieved an overwhelming victory in a rigged election which would extend his twenty-six year rule.

The citizens are rioting in the streets and ominously Lukashenko has the support of his next door neighbor, Vladimir Putin who has promised military intervention if his ally is toppled.  Belarus has long moved in lockstep with Russia in the old days of the Soviet Union.

This November is election year in America, which claims to be the leader of the free world.  Controversial president Donald Trump is seeking another four year term and his popularity is waning.  According to the polls the vote is swinging behind Joe Biden and a desperate Trump is looking at ways to remain in office.

One of the reasons the voters are turning against him is the disruption to jobs and the climbing death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping America.  Trump was slow to implement safety measures and that allowed the disease to spin out of control and the voters seems likely to settle the blame on the president's shoulders.

There have been rumors that the election might be moved to well into the following year as a safety measure. Asking the voters to congregate in the voting booths seems a sure way to spread the virus, but America's election laws are rigid and a delay is unlikely.  It seems more likely that many people will seek to deliver a postal vote as a safety measure and it is claimed that Trump is deliberately making that impossible by withdrawing financial support from the American postal service to make the handling of that letter volume too slow to deliver an outcome in a reasonable time.

Already the president is claiming that postal voting is open to election rigging and that he may not recognise the result if it goes against him.  Trump swept into office with the vote of what are termed " redneck " Americans who rallied to his election pledge to " make America great again ".  He retains much of that support and these are the people most concerned with the right to bear arms as guaranteed in the American constitution.

If Trump loses the election, but refuses to leave office it would create a situation similar to what preceded the American civil war. A political division that could only be settled by the intervention of the American armed forces, and even there it is likely that both sides would be represented.  The prospect of a political collapse in a country armed with the greatest proliferation of nuclear weapons does not bear thinking about.

Sadly, the founding fathers who devised the checks and balances of the presidential system did not envisage a man of Trump's temperament ever winning office.  His outlook is conditioned by the " dog eat dog " incestuous regime of the business world and any sense of fair play or justice is jettisoned in favor of winning at any cost.

This is shaping up as being the most dangerous election which will decide the shape of the free world. If the American system dissolves into chaos it hands world leadership to the Mandarins in Beijing, and that could take us all into unfamiliar territory  !