BAVI­TA GOPAULCHAN

bavi­ta.gopaulchan@guardian.co.tt

It is be­ing de­scribed as one of the dark­est days in US his­to­ry af­ter hun­dreds of armed sup­port­ers of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump stormed the Capi­tol build­ing, killing at least four peo­ple and send­ing the Sen­ate scam­per­ing for safe­ty.

Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Joseph Mon­del­lo, said he looked on at the dead­ly scenes of un­rest “with shock, sad­ness and dis­may”. How­ev­er, he be­lieves their coun­try should not be de­fined by this trag­ic event. In­stead, he wants their coun­try to be de­fined by how they bounced back.

In a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day, Am­bas­sador Mon­del­lo stat­ed the coun­try’s democ­ra­cy has been test­ed in the past and it will be test­ed in the fu­ture.

“Thank­ful­ly, de­spite yes­ter­day’s hor­rif­ic events, the US Con­gress and Vice Pres­i­dent Pence du­ti­ful­ly ful­filled their con­sti­tu­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and cer­ti­fied the elec­toral votes to con­firm that Pres­i­dent-elect Biden and Vice Pres­i­dent-elect Har­ris will be the next Pres­i­dent and Vice Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States,” Am­bas­sador Mon­del­lo said.

He added, “As so many of our friends, al­lies and col­leagues around the world have ex­pressed in the wake of this in­ci­dent, Amer­i­ca is bet­ter than what we wit­nessed,” he added.

He al­so thanked those who have sup­port­ed and sent their “wish­es of en­cour­age­ment, re­solve and good faith in the dif­fi­cult time. Brighter days are ahead.”

For­mer Di­rec­tor of UWI’s In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Bryan, said while he is not sur­prised by what tran­spired, Amer­i­ca has lost its priv­i­lege to com­ment on gov­er­nance is­sues of oth­er coun­tries.

Bryan said, “The US will now have to stop mor­al­iz­ing about democ­ra­cy and stop try­ing to do regime change for a coun­try like Venezuela, Iran and oth­er coun­tries. No! That role has dis­ap­peared”.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves ‘The Big Broth­er’ as the coun­try is of­ten called, is no dif­fer­ent from any oth­er de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to him, “The US has al­ways claimed to be that coun­try that would pro­tect democ­ra­cy but we see it in their own home that they are un­able to pro­tect their own democ­ra­cy as they chal­lenge the re­sults of an elec­tion”.

How­ev­er, Dr Ra­goonath not­ed that there is an im­por­tant les­son to be learnt by oth­er coun­tries.

He said, “What is crit­i­cal and im­por­tant to go for­ward with is the fact that the Con­gress was able to re­con­vene lat­er in the evening and was able to car­ry out its func­tion, du­ties and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and that is what democ­ra­cy means and what should hap­pen”.

Chair­man of CARI­COM, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, al­so is­sued a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day ex­press­ing con­cern at the un­prece­dent­ed scenes that un­fold­ed in a coun­try viewed as “a lead­ing light of rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­er­nance the world over”.

He said CARI­COM looks for­ward to the restora­tion of or­der and the con­tin­u­a­tion of the process of trans­fer of pow­er in a peace­ful man­ner.