Mirror, mirror

It seems that America has exported so much democracy over the past decades that it’s now faced with a domestic shortage. And since political systems, much like nature itself, abhor a vacuum a variety of morbid symptoms more commonly associated with Third World democracy are filling the void.

There is a considerable irony in this, given how often we have wistfully asked when Pakistani democracy will become like US democracy, with its safeguarding traditions checks and balances. While that day may never come, it does increasingly seem like America is taking a page out of our playbook.

Take nepotism. Questions are raised as to why the prime minister’s daughter is spotted meeting foreign dignitaries and heading projects like the youth loan scheme.

And lo and behold, we now see the US President-elect’s daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner (neither of whom have national security clearance) sitting in on the Trump administration’s meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Adding salt to the wounds of political ethicists, Ivanka’s jewellery company promptly used the meeting as a promotional tool, sending emails to inform customers they could purchase the bracelet she wore at the meeting for a bargain $10,800. Kushner is also being tipped to have a part in the Trump administration itself, something that could run afoul of a 1967 law against nepotism and which Trump lawyers are trying to find ways to circumvent with some legal gymnastics.

Admittedly, these are minor infringements in the larger scheme of things so let’s talk about another Pakistani bane: conflict of interest. To be specific, how does one avoid a situation where the leadership of a country uses its power for personal gain or the gain of those close to it? Here, this is common practice but in the US there are checks and balances, laws and traditions to prevent that sort of thing — a system to keep the worst excesses in check.

For instance, when a person becomes president, their assets and business interests are placed in a blind trust to be administered by persons unknown to the president himself.

Trump’s okay with that so long as the blind trust is administered by his children (who are also serving on Trump’s transition team), which makes it neither blind nor a trust.

Trust, after all, is something Trump reserves for family members and close associates he relies on to run his businesses, and who will now be relied upon to run his administration in much the same manner.

Even more desi are the reasons being given by his allies to justify this: Rudy Giuliani said that Trump’s stance is legitimate because his children would otherwise become unemployed.

Another Trump spokesperson said that media should stop concentrating on non-issues like these and instead focus on the “sacrifice” Trump has made by going from billionaire businessman to president of the United States.

But there’s no reason the two can’t go hand in hand, as the reported conversation between Trump and Argentine President Mauricio Macri shows.

Argentine media reported that when Macri called Trump to congratulate him, the president-elect reportedly used the opportunity to ask Macri to help with permit issues that have delayed the construction of a Buenos Aires office by Trump and his partners.

Soon after his election victory, Trump — with his children in tow — held a meeting with three Indian business partners in New York’s Trump Tower after which one of the partners said that Trump had shown “interest in expanding his business in India”.

Business looks good for Trump properties as well, and in an astounding display of self-promotion Washington’s Trump International Hotel held an event for diplomatic staff one week after the election in which eager diplomats were shown around the hotel’s $20,000 per night town house suites.

One Middle Eastern diplomat at the event told the reporters that “all the delegations will go to Trump Hotels” and an Asian diplomat was even more forthcoming, saying, “Why wouldn’t I stay at his hotel … so I can tell the new president, ‘I love your new hotel!’ Isn’t it rude to come to his city and say, ‘I am staying at your competitor?’”

Consider also, that all this has taken place within a few weeks of the election results, and in the presence of a media too shell-shocked and bullied by Trump to figure out exactly what has hit them.

The best is yet to come, and it isn’t yet clear if the US system will survive his presidency. Certainly, long-standing political systems do have certain resilience, and are capable of adapting and evolving like a biological entity.

But evolution is also known for dead ends and extinctions, and it is possible that Donald Trump may be for American democracy what the asteroid was for the dinosaurs. Yes, what doesn’t destroy can make you stronger but it can also leave you permanently crippled.

By arrangement with Dawn