Lessons for Sri Lanka from the American election

US President-elect Donald Trump gestures to the news media as he appears outside the main clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, US, 20 November – Reuters

By Harindra B. Dassanayake

The world was stunned for a moment when Donald Trump was elected to be the 45th President of the United States of America. It was USA’s Brexit moment. 

However weird his speeches may have looked, Trump is not a bizarre outlier of what’s happening in the West. He just adds America to the trajectory that the Western world has been travelling for almost a decade, in the form of right-nationalism in the continental Europe and protectionism in the UK. The rise of extreme nationalism and anti-migration movements in Germany and France, and Britain’s decision to leave the EU marked the previous dots of this curve.  

Let’s talk about the Americans. The hot topics of the election were trade deals, immigration policy and the big profits that banks were making. But did they really know all the details of those trade agreements they were discussing and agitating against? I guess, no. Yet, they knew one thing well. They did know about the level of their falling wellbeing. 

It’s not a regular downturn in the American economy. American were worried about a total collapse and affect the lives of their children and grandchildren. When the average man and woman is not happy about their everyday life, such complicated policy matters such as trade deals or migration become mere proxy fights for what irritated them.

When the voters are agitated and angry, they don’t spend hours and nights studying Trans-Pacific Partnership or the immigration policy, and find them to be against the interest of American people. In fact, trade and immigration laws became merely the hot buttons because the Republican candidate pushed them. The fire caught up, and many people who wanted something or someone to blame, gathered around it for heat.

What the Americans experienced was a repeat show of well-known trajectory of political turmoil around the world. First, living standards fall. As a result, the extremes of left and right rise and the moderates fail to stand the middle-ground. And finally, right nationalisms and ethno-religious movements conquer the establishment. 

This divide starts from the candidate race. In the Republican Party that represents the USA’s right-wing politics, career politicians and moderate leaders lost to Donald Trump. On the left politics of the Democratic Party race, Bernie Sanders took the democratic race to a new height on highly populist but leftist extreme (to American standards), making things difficult for moderates on both fronts. 

The election followed a simple path. Unhappy people demand desperate solutions, alternative forces show the Promised Land and people keep trust in them. What lessons can we draw from this international experience? 

Explosion of 

economic distress 

The USA was the ‘land of opportunity’. It was then. Today, for 99% of the Americans, it’s not anymore. The statistics about America’s economy says the story not less clearly than the angry voters themselves. Household income in the US has not increased since the dawn of the new century. A few million low-paying jobs have been lost during the last three decades. This stagnation looks chronic and people feel that there is no way out. It has clogged the opportunities for children from poor families and jammed their life chances. But the wealth of the richest 1% of the population has grown exponentially. When things don’t work for people, they turn to alternatives, usually at high cost.

The election campaign has to be looked at in context. Trade became a controversial topic, because it explains the great divide between the corporate world and the hard-working ordinary American. Legal as well as illegal migration is the answer if you want a reason for lost jobs. Highly-paid bankers were targeted for the very reason that they are rich while the working class find it difficult to make ends meet. The real problems underlying these allegorical slogans are much more complicated than can be fixed by reversing trade agreements or building walls between countries.

Let’s compare the election rhetoric with that of Sri Lanka. During the last presidential election campaign, there was much talk about Chinese loans, prohibitive household expenses, golden horses of princes, closing the airports to catch thieves, and a promise to an inundation of FDIs. Easier said than done. Yet, all that rhetoric back home echoed the sentiments of a people, who felt betrayed and left behind. They felt that expensive loans make them and their children indebted for generations, life became difficult for the average man and woman. Unimaginable luxury life of a privileged few contrasted with the strained means of common man. 

The anti-establishment movement that was set in motion gathered so much momentum despite near-total control of all regular print and electronic media that not even the strong claim of the victory of the ‘three-decade-war’ could resist the pressure. There’s a rule of thumb for every democracy. Economy should grow and its fruits should be shared. If not, angry voters slap those governments, in rich and poor countries alike. 

Extremism as the 

epicentre of unrest 

It was the Republican leader’s campaign that made his victory send shockwaves across the world (though our Prime Minister congratulated the President-elect for his ‘remarkable campaign’). It was a campaign that reflected the division in the American society. It was marked by unprecedented hate, anti-multiculturalism and fake-news. 

America is the land that elected Obama as President twice. With a non-Hispanic white population making up 63% of the Americans, they chose to elect a black president from among the blacks that is a 12% minority. This is unthinkable by any current Sri Lankan standard. So, did Obama’s ethnic policies make Americans more hateful and racist? Certainly not. But unhappy people gather easily around blood identities. Colour, race, religion, and caste become their unifying platforms. The rise of the alternative right (often abbreviated ‘alt-right’ and perpetuating hate) has to be seen in this context. 

It is probably not because Americans today are more racist or sexist than eight or four years ago, when they elected Obama as President, but because they are angrier today, that extremists and supremists can unite them around hateful slogans. It will take a long time than we expect to wither those extremist forces and erode their platforms. But conscientious governments can keep them at bay if proper care is given to ensure true equality of opportunity to everyone by promoting inclusive economic policies, to ensure that majority, if not all, feel left behind.

Hate, sexism, racism or bigotry doesn’t have a place in progressive politics. But, progress is not always what politicians are after. Politics, under democracy, has transformed into a form of populism replacing honour and vision of politicians that the old world used to know. Today’s politicians in the developed as well as developing world (with a handful of exceptions) would choose what is popular and convertible to a vote in their favour instead of trying to convince the people what they feel is right. The result is the populist politics that Trump’s campaign embodied. 

Sri Lanka too has a version of it, propagating racial hatred and religious supremacy. Any government that fails to understand the fact that perceived underprivileged status of people will lead to a drastic increase of subscription to those populist bigotry, the incumbent governments are in for trouble. On the other hand, such parochial forces have no better strategy than showing that the country is broke and whatever available opportunity is given to a privileged ethnic or religious minority. The strategy that the Joint Opposition has employed is not very different. 

Media control myth busted

Until the election results started coming, Hillary Clinton had already won the election on television. Almost all opinion polls predicted a Clinton victory and all mainstream media stations except a few stood firmly with Clinton. They went to a rather shameful extent to support her. Most major newspapers were reluctant critics of the Democratic candidate. In short, Clinton maintained a firm grip over all the mainstream media. This is something we Sri Lankans know very well. We’re used to extreme media control that Americans cannot fathom. But what’s new about the American model this time was the way the internet search was manipulated. 

Many videos on youtube.com showed how the largest internet search engine manipulated user searches to filter results favourable to Clinton. They showed how Google’s suggestions when a user enters the search words (technically called autofill) were distorted to avoid awkward search queries such as “Hillary Clinton email scandal”. Instead, Google would show “Hillary Clinton email scandal YouTube”, so that the user is taken to Hillary’s response to the allegations against her. Google’s market share is 75% in the internet search business. This situation reminds us of the ‘Big Brother’ effect, where all channels of public media is controlled by a one big centre of power. Not to be though. 

When all mainstream media and big internet corporations are on a single mission, the opposition adopted subversive strategies. Fake news and half-truths started going viral on the internet to favour Trump. One news said that Pope Francis broke with papal tradition of impartiality and endorsed Donald Trump to be the next President of the United States. Another one ‘leaked’ that President Obama was on a secret mission to illegitimately remain the President first by helping Hillary to win and then indicting her over the email controversy. Neither these news items, like many others that broke out, had the slightest truth behind them. But all of them went viral on the internet and created hysteric discussion among those who mattered most: the voters.

Those in power like to control media, and all they manage is to control the mainstream media and achieve a powerful presence of them in the public. However, the more the mainstream is under control, the wilder the alternative forces get. Any government that tries to increase its presence in the mainstream media including newspapers, radio, television and recognised web news portals, should realise that. Highhanded media control does not help governments, especially challenging times such as elections. People are smarter and they resist been offered little options. 

America has elected a new President and given us a lot to think about. If we want, to we can draw lessons and improve our game. But are we ready to learn? 

(The writer can be reached via [email protected].)