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Centuries separate our little island from that land mass that stands between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and remains the world’s most powerful nation.

But a long history and a rich heritage do not necessarily divide the big from the tiny. Dirty politics and political chicanery driven by greed and the thirst for power seem to bring them together on occasion, never mind their civilisations and economic and military power.

Trump’s triumphant return to the White House brings to mind political jiggery-pokery in our resplendent isle and the world’s sole superpower, struggling hard to remain so despite the arrogance of some of their leaders.

One does not need to hark back to the early days of the Mahawamsa to recall that among Sri Lanka’s prominent political figures who have adorned our glorious legislature have been individuals convicted of serious crimes or are suspected of others from murder to swindling state assets and bribery, but have not been brought to book because political power and influence intervened to halt justice in its tracks.

What is perhaps even worse is that such political figures have served in the country’s decision-making body—the cabinet—at least one of them convicted of a criminal offence had been appointed to such a high office by two recent presidents of Sri Lanka.

Not to be outdone by the political legerdemain of a potty little country whose claim to fame is to look back centuries and gloat over the achievements of our past kings while robbing the present generations, the United States of America has just elected as its leader a highly dubious business and political figure who is a convict.

What Sri Lanka can do, the US can do far, far better. Donald Trump, who served as president until he was defeated in the 2020 presidential election, is a felon. There were 34 charges levelled against this self-propelled trumpeter, but lack of space prevents me from setting out his long saga in the detail it deserves.

The world has a right to know our leaders, and theirs have been guilty of more than just grand larceny.

But it is not surprising that his lawyers use the right to presidential immunity, even partial though it might be, to absolve Trump. Sri Lankan people would not forget how some of our own presidents have resorted to this escape route since the executive presidency was introduced to this country by that great democrat and defender of freedom and people’s rights, Junius Richard Jayewardene, who had as much respect for the judiciary as Donald Duck.

Yet what leaves an outrageous smell in the civic nostril is that American people (and their governments naturally) who preach high morality, including human rights to the rest of the world—mostly lesser beings like us—have elected a convict for another four-year term, and it smells danger to nations and people near and far.

The truth is that Donald Trump, who launched his second shy at the White House, had not only proved a dangerous figure while in power, but the promises he made on the current occasion threaten to be even more dangerous.

The possible geopolitical consequences given his recent utterances have already raised concerns and jitters among even some with close multilateral and bilateral relations with Washington.

Trump called his triumph a “massive victory for democracy and for freedom.” If what Trump served his nation and the world smacks anything like democracy and freedom, then it is time he attended something like those tuition classes that our own recent part-time president Ranil Wickremesinghe offered our new prime minister Harini Amarasuriya, who was not particularly enamoured of the offer.

Of course, the United National Party (Sri Lanka’s own GOP) might well have cooked kiributh and beat raban at Trump’s return to office where their own leader failed to make it for the umpteenth time.

But what is galling is that all the while the UNP leaders and their hangers-on were ridiculing the NPP-JVP combine and its assemblage and calling on the voters to send the knowledgeable and the experienced in governance to parliament, what do their American cousins do when their turn came to elect the best and the brightest to lead their superpower nation?

Instead of listening to their country cousins in that pearl of the Indian Ocean, they, in their infinite wisdom, did better. Whereas the UNP and its acolytes urged the people to pack the Diyawanna Oya abode with master thinkers, the Americans elected a convicted felon with 34 charges trailing him at one time to tell the world how it should conduct itself.

Presidents Gotabaya Rajapaksa and Ranil Wickremesinghe combined could not have done better when they chose cabinet ministers.

The UNP’s undying attachment to the American Republican Party was etched long years ago, especially after the UNP came under Junius Richard Jayewardene who had earned the sobriquet of “Yanky Dicky” long before he took charge of reviving the UNP.

That tradition of fealty to the Republicans has continued under some other leaders too, and its one-time hardcore, though it has melted away in recent years despite the obeisance paid to the US ambassador in Colombo, Julie Chung.

Her continuing performance as a part-time pro-consul does recall that of Indian High Commissioner Jyotindra Nath ‘Mani’ Dixit played with such aplomb that it had even “Tricky Dicky” kowtowing now and then to our northern neighbour.

It was not too long ago when our own presidential election was on the cards that the last dregs of the UNP abandoned their sacred elephant and grabbed a gas cylinder, hoping that all its gas would move the country’s voters to beware of the NPP. For hidden behind the political civility of its mask was the face of Marx, they said.

But they never acknowledged that the UNP distorted UNP’s history of governance in the 1970s and ’80s, to drive the fear of anarchy and violence into the people of the then JVP.

The less the UNP, which its remnants claim will rise like Lazarus, talks of democracy, freedom and the rule of law, including the last two years when the judiciary was bullied and nearly battered, reviving a sense of deja vu in our highest courts, it would be best, especially when it has friends like Donald Trump.

One would recall that it was the same UNP and its hangers-on who pole-vaulted from the Pohottuwa to the UNP in search of political pickings, who accused the NPP of trying to storm the Diyawanna parliament and even set it on fire.

Yet these accusers with short memories forget that the preacher of Trumpian democracy and freedom was the very man who in January 2021 had his own ‘gauleiters’ and armed goons attack Capitol Hill and storm Congress in an attempt to stop the newly elected president of the country from officially assuming office. Trump was using his stormtroopers to undermine the democratic rights and the will of the people.

Perhaps the intention was to set fire to Congress as Hitler’s goons did to the Reichstag and ours did to the Jaffna library.

Now, there is democracy, freedom, and the rule of law for you. Who knows, perhaps a day will come when we will hear them cry out “Heil Fṻhrer, Heil Herr Trump”!

Stranger things have happened in this world. Remember the snake that emerged from the river by the Kelaniya Raja Maha Vihara and almost destroyed the universe of the covid Wasangathaya and our business chaps of the money they were making!

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor of the Hong Kong Standard and worked for Gemini News Service in London. Later, he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London.)