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If Donald Trump’s race to the White House had consisted of a consistent barrage of surprises, bombshells and shocks, he delivered the biggest shock, surprise and outrage to America and to the world this Tuesday when, having groped the electorate’s contours from tip to toe and felt its pulse wanting, willing to embrace him and welcome to his advances, he bushwhacked his way to the Oval Office to occupy the supreme seat of temporal power.

It was an astounding victory made more remarkable by his triumph over the vilifications, the slanders, the revilements that had dogged his run up to the presidency. He had been crucified for his indiscretions, impaled for his locker room babble and castrated, in the pranger of public opinion, for straying hands that wandered beyond decent norms in mischief: the dirt dug up from the tomb of lust’s ashes and flung in his tracks to despoil his ever quickening stride to pip Hillary at the presidential post.

A conservative America, led by an elite ruthless Washington mafia of both Republicans and Democrats had risen in full force to prevent such rich, brash upstairs upsetting the all American apple cart. But the best laid plans of mortal men to elevate to the highest office in the world, a woman endowed with more baggage than she could carry, were foiled by fate’s deciding hand. With the plans come a cropper and the tables turned, the Trump phenomenon was on its way to keep its tryst with destiny.

If there is providence in the fall of a sparrow, what divine force spurred the flight of this American bald eagle to the sunny uplands of world power?

TRUMP: Ensconced in his tower as the 45th President of America

When the American two party system finally decided on their respective candidates to do battle for the country’s and thus the world’s top most job, it was clear to all that America had fallen embarrassingly short of being able to make good on quality when it came to delivering presidential material. But, alas, beggars cannot be choosers; and it was the sad lot of the American public to make do with what e’er was dropped into their beggared bowl of voter choice. The stark choice lay between the devil in disguise and the unfathomable depths of the deep blue sea where Hillary hid her email and foundation secrets.

From the start the odds were stacked against Trump. And heavily loaded in favour of Clinton.
Seventeen months ago when multi millionaire Donald Trump, check book in hand and wads of dollars stuffed in his pockets, first broke loose from his executive TV office where he had been hosting The Apprentice’ and wooing his viewers with his catch phrase ‘You’re fired’, to announce his bizarre intention to contest the American Presidential election, he was greeted with jeers and laughter; and his impertinence to aspire to the zenith of the American political pole and play God to all humanity, was brushed aside with derision as the action of a rich crank, out to massage his already full blown ego with the balm of public attention.

Though he sought the Republican ticket, the Republican leadership never embraced him, never encouraged him, and showed they never wanted him. Some even went to the extent of publicly disowning him. He was considered the rank outsider who had gate crashed the Republican garden tea party. But when he began clinching the states one after another and bagging them big, for instance, New York, Pennsylvania and California to mention a few, it was time even for the staid Speaker of the House, Republican heavyweight, Paul Ryan to take cognizance of Trump’s existence and face the growing possibility that Trump will scoop the lot to become the unchallengeable candidate at July’s deciding Republican convention.

LOSER: Hillary’s failed bid to become first woman president of the USA

As the embattled Republican Guards watched aghast at the unfolding spectacle of their chosen white knights fall before the lusty charge of the dark horseman; and closed ranks to prevent the errant imposter to the Republican crown from gaining higher ground, it seemed there was no immovable obstacle they could erect to stop his unstoppable march to the Republican Convention and from there to the White House.

It seemed as if some inexplicable sinister power was inexorably drawing him to keep his rendezvous at the Oval office which none could forestall or prevent. Not the world, not the Democrats, not the Republicans, not the pollsters, not the media and, finally, not even the people of America who, driven, perhaps, by some mystic force, kept secret their choice until the appointed hour arrived when they dutifully cast their ballot in favour of the demagogue all loved to hate.

How Donald Trump won the primaries should have given a clue to his unstoppable march to the White House. Coming as a dark outsider, as a man who had never held public office or served in the military and therefore did not know the unwritten rules of political engagement, Trump was viewed, even by his own party, as one who was out of the establishment fringe, a cad at a debutante’s ball who thought the deb’s ‘Texan Dip’ an invitation to grope her bosom.

That he had the gall to vie in the republican conclave and then to send smoke signals as its chosen pope to contest the presidency wasn’t an acceptable scene of the American dream that the power brokers could easily stomach. It was a factor the media seized early on to pooh-pooh, rubbish, distort, make grotesque in a bid to precipitate Trump’s downfall even before the ink was dry on his nomination papers. But the fates held differently and disagreed.

And what of Hillary, ah she had everything going for her and her quest to become the first woman president of America seemed guaranteed to succeed. Though the cuckolded wife of Bill Clinton, the former president of the United States whose embarrassing incontinence in holding back his DNA at the Oval office she had long forgiven, she was the belle of the ball, the darling of the Washington establishment.

Once the First Lady of America twice over, she was a senator, the democratic candidate against Obama’s nomination bid in 2007 and Obama’s secretary of state between 2009 and 2013, all rolled into one.

But if she was Washington DC’s prim and proper, prep prepared icon of virtue, she soon turned to be the electorates’ Miss Piggy of Sesame Street when news broke of her private emails, her foundation’s shadowy dealings, the million dollar donation to the Clinton fund from the Qatar Government which she had not disclosed as required by American law and a FBI probe into an ‘avalanche’ of corruption.

These served to chink the alabaster white image carved by the media and perhaps the last crack fatally appeared when the FBI Director last week issued a letter to Congress that the “FBI had discovered new emails that appeared “to be pertinent to the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server”. Though he retracted this statement, two days before the election, saying that no new evidence had emerged to indict Hillary, it may have well served to demolish her election hopes.

Whether it ‘put the biggest crack’ in the chandelier of Hillary’s hopes to become the first woman president of America and made it come crashing down on her chances, is now purely a matter of academic conjecture. All that remains in the debris of her defeat is that she failed to ‘put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet” as she – after seeing a video clip featuring all of the country’s 44 male presidents in order – from George Washington to Barrack Obama – had proudly vowed to do to end the 227 year male monopoly on the White House.

She may have had the experience for the job but too many years on the Washington store shelf had made stale any freshness and appeal she may have had. When the outgoing President Obama tried his best to give a fillip to her campaign, it flopped miserably. His pathetic appeal to the public on the Jimmy Kimmelly Show not to rock the boat but to keep it on an even keel by voting for the establishment only served to reveal his own desire not to have his legacy of Obamacare well preserved to crown his own place in posterity.

And when present First Lady Michelle Obama, presently on a high, barged in to make an impassioned appeal to the American public to vote Clinton as President, no one was giving ear; and, even if they had watched her do the twist and shake with Obama to Jackson music on TV on Halloween night, no one was thrilled enough to heed her call and fall for the trick.

The American public, it appears, had had enough of the establishment’s conservatism. They were fed up with the system and sick of their politicians who promised the sun when it was out at night and left their lives and their inner cities in perpetual darkness. The masses wanted change, radical change, a new refreshing, robust air to sweep away the dust and cobwebs that had gathered over the ages.

They wanted a brave new knight, however uncouth, ungainly, unchivalrous he may be, to give them a brave new America: to storm the moat and invade the citadel and set free the forgotten in the dungeons. A new rebellious Captain America to stir the crew below to mutiny and take command of the old ship and set new sail to voyage uncharted seas to find new islands of opportunity and riches galore. And Donald Trump fitted the bill to shake America out of its complacency and lift her people out of the doldrums. He offered them the last chance to have a slice of the American pie.

The watching world, however, did not take too kindly to the prospect of having such a wild card Trump as the new tenant at the White House. Hillary was solidly stable and boringly predictable, her cues either coming from her husband Bill or taken from her previous boss Barrack. Donald, on the other hand, was a loose unguided missile.

For instance, French president François Hollande made obvious his disdain. His message stated that he was congratulating Trump “as is natural between two heads of state” to do so. Germany’s Merkel raised the red flag of her displeasure, and said “a close working relationship based only on the common values shared by the two nations: democracy, freedom, respect for the law and for human dignity irrespective of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political conviction.” Merkel’s memo was the sort of blunt message writ in the style and tone that big powers normally reserve for despot dictators of banana republics. Britain’s Theresa May, however, gushed how much she ‘looks forward to working with him’ while Lanka’s president and prime minister rushed to express their warm congratulations and said they ‘were looking forward to working closely with him and team. “

Many in Lanka have drawn a parallel between this week’s US election and last year’s presidential poll in Lanka. But it’s not because on the surface Trump resembles Rajapaksa with his anti Muslim talk and ‘make America great again’ jingoism. The similarity lies more with Trump and Sirisena representing the need for change contrasted with Clinton and Mahinda promising a brighter future by maintaining the status quo. The Trump-Sirisena message ‘enough is enough, time for change’ caught the people’s imagination to propel both to power while the Clinton-Rajapaksa message ‘Why Change” got the thumbs down and sent both home. The only hope America can have now is that Trump will not make a pig’s breakfast out of the sacred mandate the American public has bestowed upon him.

Shocked Democrats who were so cocksure of a Hillary landslide win now claim that victory is hers because she won the popular vote though she failed to win the all important 270 electoral college votes as the US constitution demands is necessary to become the elected president of the nation. The final election tally is 290 Electoral College votes for Trump, 20 seats more than necessary to win the presidency while for Clinton 232 Electoral College votes, a shortfall of 38 votes to reach the magic 270 and trailing behind Trump by 58 college votes.

As far as the popular vote is concerned, even if it counts – and it doesn’t – in the final analysis, she has won only 0.2 percent more votes than Trump. She received 47.8% or 60,828,358to Trump’s 47.3% or 60,261,924 votes or 566,434 votes or .05 % more than Trump. In the 2000 election Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote by over 543,002 votes or .05 but Republican Bush won 272 Electoral College votes to Gore’s 266 votes and became president. No one took to the streets then.

But today, Hillary voters have taken to the streets to protest the Trump victory. For the second night running, thousands on Thursday marched through Washington DC, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York and Baltimore. And even as the Maithri government condemned the protest rallies held last year shortly after Sirisena’s victory as politically arranged, so has President elect Trump denounced those taking part in street protests trending now as “professional protesters” who have been “incited by the media”

To Hilary Clinton’s credit, she gracefully accepted defeat and urged her supporters to extend their support to the new president. This is in stark contrast to what happened in Lanka last year when Sirisena won 449,073 more votes than Rajapaksa. Rajapaksa’s supporters claimed that more Sinhalese had voted for Rajapaksa than for Sirisena and – as they did not consider that Tamil and Muslim votes counted in a Sinhala Lanka – that Rajapaksa was thus the de facto president; and made this conclusion the basis for their ‘Bring back Mahinda’ campaign.

Another factor is that both Sirisena and Trump said they will jail their rivals for corruption once elected. It hasn’t still happened here. Whether Trump will follow suit or whether he will show the “Go directly to jail’ card to Hillary remains to be seen after his inauguration.
For Trump, what the rest of the world think does not matter. Why should it? The world can like the American people’s decision or lump it at their peril. As he said in his victory speech, ‘the US would get along with all other nations which are willing to get along with the US’. If not, tough for them. The American people have chosen him and, as it is said, the people get the leaders they deserve. He had striven so hard to gain the world’s ultimate power studded crown to wear it: not for the world to condemn it as counterfeit and spoil his ecstasy in his hour of triumph. Above all, no matter whether he has bitten off more than he can chew, he has done it his way. And come up roses.
But has Heaven’s malice granted Trump’s presidential prayers?

Having now got the presidency in his bag and clinched the scalp he had hunted for so long to add to his trophy collection, will it turn out to be a curse for the man who, throughout his 70 year life, went where he willed, said what he said and did what he wanted to do, including, as he himself as admitted, placing his hands between a woman’s cleavage – any woman that caught his fancy – and grabbing her breasts to brag about it later in the locker room to impress his bosom pals? Will the Oval office turn out to be a gilded cage with him as the trapped canary without a song in his heart and his pecker down in the dumps? Will the trappings of that office in the land of the brave and free, deny him the very freedom he is duty bound to protect and guarantee to all Americans? That’s the danger.

Throughout his life, he had been his own man. The millionaire’s son. The buccaneer businessman. The New York playboy, ever with a blonde immigrant bimbo by his side, two of whom he wed. And covetous eyes on other men’s wives, though, as he said, he didn’t always score on that front.

Even during the election campaign he had the liberty to say what he wished to say and he said it loud and clear even though it nearly cost him his grand prize.

Now with the world straining to hear his every word and acting on it, with financial markets taking their cues from his word and deed, with foreign governments harking, reading and trying to decipher his every off the cuff statement and to decrypt its hidden nuances as an indication of America’s policy and mind, he would probably feel handcuffed and gagged and in a straitjacket with only a cell phone, as Obama said of his own White House cell phone, from which he is security barred to make or receive a single call, let alone send or get a text message.

Today one thing’s for sure. The world can like him or loathe him but cannot ignore him. The electoral system of America and her people have enthroned him as their president. He had fought the hard ugly fight, braced every below the belt blow hurled at him from all sides of the ring but faced it all and now stands tall as the President and commander in chief of the world’s richest and mightiest nation, the world’s sole and perhaps last superpower. His millions may have financed his campaign but it was not his riches that won him his spurs. He has won it despite his wealth, despite himself and despite his mega ego.

He had discerned, even as Shakespeare’s Brutus told Cassius, that ‘there is a tide in the affairs of men’. He had taken it at the flood and it had led him to his isle of kismet. He had not ignored its swell and opted to remain complacent in the shallows but dared to voyage on a brimming sea and taken the current when it arose to reach the horizon’s rising sun.
His astounding ascent to the White House is the stuff of miracles, the magic of fairytales. Even though it may not have the customary happy ending.