That the for­mer Unit­ed States pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has been in­dict­ed to stand tri­al in a crim­i­nal mat­ter has been his­toric news over the last few days. Hold­ing a for­mer pres­i­dent ac­count­able for at­tempt­ing to in­cite protest ac­tion is of great im­por­tance, not just for the US, but for coun­tries of this Hemi­sphere huge­ly in­flu­enced by that so­ci­ety.

In sev­er­al coun­tries in South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, there have been a num­ber of gov­ern­ment lead­ers who have not on­ly been tried in a court but have served prison terms. The in­dict­ment in the US is a dis­play of the mea­sure of in­de­pen­dence and strength of the le­gal and po­lit­i­cal sys­tems there.

To force the for­mer pres­i­dent to an­swer to a court has gained ad­di­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance, as Man­hat­tan Dis­trict At­tor­ney, Alvin Bragg, who placed the mat­ter in front of the Grand Ju­ry, is black. That re­al­i­ty has gained the stri­dent at­ten­tion of the White Su­prema­cist group in the USA.

Up to this point, the re­port­ing has in­di­cat­ed 30 charges are like­ly to be laid against Trump to­mor­row. What is known is that many of the mat­ters hinge around the al­leged pay­ment of “hush mon­ey” to Ms Stormy Daniels, re­gard­ing a sex­u­al en­counter she is al­leged to have had with Mr Trump. The al­leged act is not in it­self the cause of the in­dict­ment, but that Ms Daniel was paid to keep silent about it in the run-up to the 2016 elec­tion, a vi­o­la­tion of cam­paign laws in the USA.

It must be of great con­cern to Mr Trump, his sup­port base and at­tor­neys that 24 hours be­fore the charges are due to be laid-out in court, there is no con­crete in­for­ma­tion on them. Will they be at a rel­a­tive­ly low lev­el, or will they be es­ca­lat­ed by ac­com­pa­ny­ing charges of a far more se­ri­ous na­ture, in­clud­ing ones which may car­ry a com­pul­so­ry jail term if the for­mer pres­i­dent is found guilty?

A ver­dict, even if the Man­hat­tan dis­trict at­tor­ney’s of­fice is able to sus­tain the charges through to a full tri­al, will sure­ly im­pact the le­gal and po­lit­i­cal cul­ture in the USA and in the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic world which spins around that coun­try.

If it can be achieved there, why not else­where? If Mr Trump can use his po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence amongst his base to bring the case to a pre­ma­ture halt, not ex­clud­ing the pos­si­ble threat of wide­spread vi­o­lence, that will sure­ly have very deep con­se­quences which can find root in the pol­i­tics of half the world, the Amer­i­c­as.

Even be­fore he was in­dict­ed, Mr Trump had be­gun to egg-on his sup­port­ers in­to tak­ing protest ac­tion. From the ex­am­ple of the re­cent past, such protests can be­come vi­o­lent.

How will the po­lit­i­cal cul­tures of those coun­tries look­ing on from close by re­flect on, and take pat­tern if court cas­es and de­ci­sions are al­lowed to be peace­ful­ly tak­en the dis­tance; or in­ter­rupt­ed by vi­o­lence by the sup­port­ers of Mr Trump?

Those are ques­tions which can on­ly be an­swered de­fin­i­tive­ly by time, the ac­tions of a very di­vid­ed so­ci­ety and poli­ty will be se­vere­ly test­ed more so that this is said to be on­ly the first in­dict­ment to be brought against the for­mer pres­i­dent.