By Chigumbu Warikandwa
The United States of America has sent the global tongue wagging from its insistent talk on democracy, human rights, law and order. This is despite an ongoing impeachment attempt on President Donald Trump who is accused of deflowering the American constitution through undemocratic and equally uninspiring actions that are contrary to their pronouncements. The impeachment attempt will obviously fail to jettison Trump out of Capitol Hill, courtesy of undemocratic designs aimed at forestalling this embarrassment on a sitting head of state.
While it is beyond dispute that Trump is unpopular and that he was not designed for a job demanding a serous character like presidency, the Americans will fail to sack him using the so called democratic institutions at their disposal. If anything, Americans have to learn to live with Trump until his contract expires. Trump whether or not he will live to see a second term of office that is a question for the future.
Meanwhile, Trump is not the only American President to lead the country in an uninspiring manner. Bill Clinton had his own ways; democracy did not sack him either. John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated, but American democracy was still there. The shenanigan of the American political order shreds the meaning of democracy or anything democracy was designed for.
While America preaches democracy, which is based on rotational power sharing, smooth transfer of such power through universal suffrage, it surprisingly hobnobs in midnight friendships with political establishments that trash this political order. While there is no international law that anointed democracy as the standard order of politics, the process has won the hearts of many as the fairest way in which people can govern themselves. Democracy is ideally designed to protect the interest of the weakest members of the society against the powerful.
America does not respect the interest of the weak. Its top priority is the protection of its own selfish interest. Whoever threatens this interest, whether or not he is democratic, will see the wrath of America in verbatim. Conversely, whoever proves to be the least threat to American hegemony, whether or not he be democratic, this will be part of America’s long list of undemocratic concubines. In Syria, America has remained blind to the atrocities unfolding there because it has no loss in the process. Other undemocratic bulwarks like Saudi Arabia and Israel are among some of America’s girlfriends despite their undisguised trampling on human rights and utter disregard of democracy or anything similar to it. The reason being that; America is in those countries feasting on natural resources there with the blessings and collusion of the ruling establishments. Once the establishments begin to think otherwise about such economic exploitation, the democratic eye on America’s face begins to see with clarity.
In Saudi Arabia, half the population has some form of freedom though limited. The rest live a life of servitude and second-class citizenship. Saudi women remain perpetual minors under primitive, archaic and religion and patriarchy-driven laws that see objects in women. The women cannot drive, learn computers, be visible to the world (through lifelong wearing of the burqa that conceals a woman from head to toe) and cannot decide their destiny. Women live as second class citizens and second fiddle to men where they cannot see the meaning of life except as a beneficiary of a man. Women are raped and with impunity, they cannot date or marry a man of their choice. Despite all these outrageous assaults on the persons of women, America has not lifted even a weak finger against these excesses. But the same America has barked and bitten countries where citizens enjoy life as equals; countries with ministries funded and designed for the empowerment of women.
The same America has bulldozed its way into God-given wealth of sovereign citizens. It has sponsored bloody wars in the Democratic Republic of Congo in order to loot cobalt, diamonds and gold inside the confusion. The same arrangement was established in Libya in 2011 following the overrun of the oil rich nation by NATO bandits bankrolled by American. America is busy scavenging the carcass of the Libyan invasion nine years after the raid.
France today is riding Francophone Africa roughly, looting the poor countries’ only God-given wealth in order to feed already fed French children back in Paris. America has not raised a finger. Instead, America funds Francophone establishments through petty cash returns from the gross looting of the said nations’ resources through shadowy foundations designed for this purpose.
The Sultan of Brunei, a psychopath who practically owns Brunei and everything else between its borders, flora, fauna, minerals and people as his personal effects has properties and investments in America. He is not indicted for human rights abuse.
And as if out of following the dictates of a long forgotten hobby, America finds itself questioning the democratic tenets and the respect for human and people’s rights in Zimbabwe where various commissions aimed at championing such rights are assembled and are in full operation. Zimbabwe is a signatory to dozens of human rights treaties and conventions, treaties that it has operationalized into laws via the constitution. Zimbabwe has not carried capital punishment on its convicted suspects and President Emmerson Mnangagwa started making spirited attempts on outlawing capital punishment during his days as justice minister. Zimbabwe was not forced into these arrangements on human rights.
Today, Zimbabwe has one of the harshest laws against sexual offenders as a means of protecting women, who form the bulk of sexual offenses victims. Today, Zimbabwe has parliamentary committees superintending over human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Some of these committees are chaired by members of parliament from the opposition bench.
Such arrangements are unknown in some of America’s global friends. Every friendship or enmity established by America is not without an ulterior motive. Nothing is without a hidden agenda.
Let not America lecture anyone on human rights. Guantanamo Bay evidence is there for everyone to see.
