<\/p>\n
With only few days to go \u2013 8 November \u2013 it is still uncertain who of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will receive the final approval of the American people to become the next President of the United States of America. We will not know until we know kind of. <\/span><\/p>\n But what has been known and witnessed so far has been unprecedented in any previous US presidential election campaign. Well before the two presidential nominees began their face-to-face confrontations \u2013 for one cannot really speak of debate! \u2013 political analysts in the US had already made a damning observation: that this was the dirtiest ever campaign in American politics.<\/span><\/p>\n They thought it could not get any lower. It did, to the extent that one headline read: \u2018The debasing of American politics\u2019. <\/span><\/p>\n Some reference to Trump\u2019s tax irregularities and Clinton\u2019s email saga had already been made. After the FBI director\u2019s congressional hearing and Clinton\u2019s public avowal and apology, one thought that these were done with and that their subsequent interactions would be about policy matters and similar serious issues. <\/span><\/p>\n And then, as the saying goes, the shit hit the fan. Muck began to fly all over. Trump\u2019s wife Ivania’s past as a model was brought in with implications of impropriety on her part. She decied to sue. And then, in the first face-to-face between the two presidential nominees, Donald Trump flew off the handle and started to elaborate on Hillary Clinton\u2019s husband Bill Clinton\u2019s sexual adventures during his presidency. <\/span><\/p>\n Not unsurprisingly, the Democrats went and fished out a video conversation between a journalist, Billy Bush, and Donald Trump in which he allegedly talks about how he gropes women and takes other liberties with them. No need to say that this recording went \u2018viral\u2019, and other skeletons started tumbling out of the cupboard in the form of women coming forward and accusing Donald Trump of misbehaving with them at various times in the past and under various circumstances. <\/span><\/p>\n The noise from these \u2018revelations\u2019 and allegations took front seat as it were, and dominated all other discussions. <\/span><\/p>\n And the latest is the equivalent of a bombshell: the FBI director opening another can of worms in relation to Hillary Clinton\u2019s emails, although it concerns an assistant of hers rather than herself directly. While, predictably \u2013 the only thing predictable in this campaign, that each candidate will muck up some more in retaliation! –, Donald Trump began to use this as an electoral strong point, an unfazed Hillary Clinton took the FBI director head-on and asked him to go the whole hog and give full clarifications to herself and the American people. She even \u2018predicted\u2019 that eventually the FBI director would come to the same conclusion as he had done regarding the first enquiry on her emails: that though there had been irregularity, which she had accepted, there was no case for any criminal or other prosecution against her. <\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, there has been an impact on her rating, with a closing of the gap between the two candidates, and one poll showing that Trump is leading in a key state, North Carolina. This jubilates him, but Democrats are not convinced, following a standard reaction to the polls that are being carried out by various agencies. Each side believes the poll that is favourable to it and doubts if not disregards the one that is unfavourable! Just so human, one would say. Except that the campaign has been carried out at a subhuman level.<\/span><\/p>\n In any case, experience round the world has consistently shown that one cannot go by the polls as regards electoral outcomes, so wide off the mark they are most of the time. And so it is with the US elections. President Trump or \u2013 another — President Clinton?<\/span><\/p>\n We must wait\u2026 * * * What is happening in our country?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n In the wake of the Arab uprising that was triggered by the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in Tunis in January 2011, the magazine Jeune Afrique gave extensive coverage in an issue headlined: \u2018Tunisie: Les secrets d\u2019une r\u00e9volution\u2019. In one column by Fethi Benslama, a psychoanalyst and professor at the university of Paris-Diderot, he identified three causes which he thought had built up the momentum towards the overthrow of the Tunisian dictator Ben Ali.<\/span><\/p>\n They were: 1) un haut \u00e9difice de mensonges sur la d\u00e9mocratie, l\u2019Etat de droit, l\u2019excellence, etc. 2) la crapulerie du cercle dirigeant devenu tr\u00e8s visible, and 3) tr\u00e8s important: cette jouissance ostentatoire des poss\u00e9dants qui jettent les signes de leur richesse \u00e0 la figure des autres. <\/span>Bref, on tendait au peuple un miroir de m\u00e9pris.<\/span><\/p>\n Exactly what we have been seeing in Mauritius. For that matter, even before vire mam. And there is no indication that things are about to change, or that a devire mam will necessarily bring change either.<\/span><\/p>\n R.I.P. my Beloved Country. TP Saran<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With only few days to go \u2013 8 November \u2013 it is still uncertain who of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will receive the final approval of the American people to become the next President of the United States of America. We will not know until we know kind of. But what has been known […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[95,1803,2234,2233,2073],"class_list":["post-4622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-affairs","tag-donald-trump","tag-hillary-clinton","tag-jeune-afrique-fethi-benslama-ben-ali","tag-mohamed-bouazizi","tag-us-presidential-election"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/MT-Logokk.jpg?fit=1200%2C880&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8QzSF-1cy","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mauritiustimes.com\/mt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n