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Donald Trump broke the mould of American politics to stage a historic comeback to the White House, the first time a president had ever made a non-consecutive return to power for over hundred and thirty years.

It was an amazing victory that Trump had pulled off against his female rival Kamala Harris, who, along with her inane horse-laugh, was fired and shown the door—in no uncertain terms—by more than 70 million American people. Pollsters had boosted her ego by predicting she would win the polls, albeit after a narrow neck-to-neck, hard-fought battle in the seven swing states that held the key to the White House.

These seven sisters—Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Michigan—were heavily tipped by pollsters to snub Trump’s lusty hand and, instead, choose Kamala as a successful suitor. US political pundits’ belief that Kamala’s promise to give women the right to abort life had a special appeal to all women in these seven swing states heavily backfired. Election results late Tuesday night showed not all women had sex constantly on their minds, and even the most promiscuous hardly thought of abortions when they could easily purchase a condom at any drugstore.

AMERICA’S NEW PRESIDENT ELECT: Donald Trump - in the greatest comeback of all comebacks - and First Lady Melania Trump share the resounding applause of victory

On the last night of her campaign, her final rally was a star-studded concert held in Allentown, Philadelphia, in the swing state of Pennsylvania. With Oprah Winfrey compering and Lady Gaga belting ‘God save America,’ Kamala told an exclusive female audience, with a brightly lit neon sign ‘President for All’ flashing behind her and her often repeated tantric message: ‘I will fight for the fundamental freedom of a woman’s right to her own body and not to a government that tells her what to do’.

Last week, USA Today reported that over 77 percent of Black Georgians planned to vote for Harris, according to a recent poll from the Atlanta Journal Constitution. Black people make up Georgia’s largest minority voting bloc, representing roughly 30% of all registered voters in the swing state.

The co-founder of the black civic rights male group, ‘Black Male Initiative Group’, John Taylor, told USA Today that through door-to-door canvassing and after his group had over 195,000 conversations with Black men during this election cycle, the vast majority—roughly 83%—voiced their support for Harris. Added to this, former first Lady Michelle Obama was also canvassing hard for the black vote for Kamala, and the pollsters looked very much spot on in predicting Georgia’s pendulum to swing in favour of Harris.

POOR KAMALA HARRIS: Fired

North Carolina was the first swing state to swing to Trump. Thus, when Black Georgia—with a bag of 16 electoral college votes for grabs—fell on early Wednesday morning to Trump, a sobering hush simultaneously fell on the Democrats’ camp to dampen its revelling high spirits.

When Pennsylvania followed suit and swung to Trump, giving him an extra 19 college votes, bringing his vote tally to 266—just 4 seats short of the magical 270 required to win the US presidency, with all the other swing states projecting a win for Trump—the bells began to toll for Kamala Harris.

After four months of campaigning, Kamala’s dream of becoming the first black woman President of the US died hard on the battlegrounds of seven swing states, each one tipped to swing toward her. In the end, it was no neck-to-neck race, no photo finish at the post, but one where Trump had easily pipped the post with furlongs to spare. Instead of being a tight race, which pollsters had predicted it to be, it had been a clean sweep, a landslide victory for Trump.

The mood amongst Democrats’ Watch Party, who had initially gathered at Kamala’s Alma Mater Howard campus, the Black University in Washington, DC, was one of festive revelry. But when three key swing states rolled like a row of dominoes in Trump’s favour, the atmosphere abruptly turned sombre.

Dismal supporters who had come to cheer Kamala’s win had to remain to hear her swansong, conceding the battle was over. But instead of Kamala arriving that night to deliver her concession speech, an aide appeared to curtly announce that, ‘Kamala will not be making a speech tonight. She will do so in the morning. She has gone home to bed.’

While gloom had set in the Democrats’ camp in Wednesday’s twilight hours, Republicans in the Trump Watch Party at the Convention Centre in Florida’s West Palm Beach stood galvanised, exhilarated, and intoxicated by the welcoming prospect of a new Trump era about to dawn on the US. With his tally at 266 and Kamala trailing far behind, Trump strode in with family and the star team to resounding applause from the ecstatic crowd.

The family members who joined Trump on stage were his wife Melania, sons Eric, 40, and Donald Trump Jr., 46, Barron, 18, daughters Tiffany, 31, and Ivanka, 43, and granddaughter Kai, 17. Trump’s daughters-in-law, Eric Trump’s wife Lara, and Donald Trump Jr.’s fiancée Kimberly Guilfoyle. Amongst his closest team, who also took centre stage, was the new star born in the Trump firmament, billionaire Elon Musk.

During his victory speech, he introduced his wife Melania as the First Lady of America and paid special tribute to her outstanding qualities. He gave due credit to each one in his team, singling out Elon, whom he hailed as a genius. Musk is tipped to be the ‘efficiency expert’ in the Trump Administration, the killjoy of public spending, tasked with the mission to reduce America’s 3 trillion dollar debt to a trillion.

Standing on the threshold of an astounding comeback that would land him in the Oval Office, Trump declared, “I believe, the greatest political movement of all time, there’s never been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond. And now it’s going to reach a new level of importance because we’re going to help our country heal; we’re going to help our country heal. We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible, and it is now clear that we’ve achieved the most incredible political thing.

“But it’s a political victory that our country has never seen before; nothing like it. This will truly be the golden age of America; that’s what we have to have. This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again.”

Defying all the odds that were politically stacked against him, Trump ran through the gauntlet of legal lashes to emerge unscathed to justly win the presidential seat. Throughout these last four years, he had been vilified, abused, condemned and banished to the American wilderness, branded as a political pariah to be scorned and spat on sight.

Four years of relentless abuse and vicious attacks on his character as a fascist, a racist, a sexist, the evil incarnate come to destroy the earth, had left the world convinced to hold in dread his satanic second advent to the seat of supreme power. Despite the Biden Administration’s tireless efforts, hammered home daily by a supportive liberal media to millions of Americans, they failed to keep the ogre from reaching the gates of world power. They failed, for none reckoned the Fates had ordained otherwise.

Destiny’s tide had taken Trump from the dregs of malicious abuse to inexorably lead him through countless court cases, through entangled webs of legalities specifically designed to foil his passage, and, if that weren’t enough, through a damning federal court conviction to providential escape from the jaws of jail. The heaven-sent torrent, into which Trump had been hopelessly dragged while in full flow, served to relentlessly take him to finally land him ashore.

On destiny’s untrammelled route, he survived a sniper’s bullet, which merely grazed his ear, missing his brain by a whisker, while another attempt to shoot him down at his golf course was averted in the nick of time by a divine hand intervened to alert a lone secret service agent of the sniper’s deadly presence.

If the failed first attempt had kindled his faith in God’s grace, that made him say in his victory speech, “God spared my life for a reason. And that reason was to save our country and restore America to greatness, and now we are going to fulfil that mission,” the failed second attempt would only have intensified his belief in the holiness of his crusade.

Undoubtedly, the Fates played their ordained roles to bring him back from the billabong of wilderness and, in the grandest comeback of all comebacks, return to the White House in triumphant splendour.

With Republicans winning the Senate and on track to win the House of Representatives too, the people had garlanded Donald Trump with an unprecedented and powerful mandate to govern and enforce his policy, ‘America First’.

The same question will be repeatedly asked by Lankans as they head to the parliamentary polls on Thursday. After winning the presidency with less than 50 percent of the vote, can the JVP-NPP hybrid government even hope to receive a simple majority in the House, let alone the two-thirds majority they had initially claimed they could get?

Nearly two months ago. Anura Kumara broke the old political mould when he rode on the crest of a media wave swept by fierce winds of vengeful hate to the victorious shores of power.

But with the euphoric tide fast ebbing in the aftermath of his election triumph and the masses bottled hate fast finding release on the untrodden beach where the 76-year curse that had laid siege on the nation was, at last, exorcised, long dormant hopes, in the promised dawn of radical change, took wing to yonder skies.

The people had been promised the sun, moon, and stars on the pre-election stage, but so far no ray, beam, nor twinkle had appeared to gleam through the cracks in their poverty-stricken homes.

Nor had they beheld the enchanting miracle of the high cost of living sharply falling to an all-time record low, nor VAT reduced, nor their light bills cut by two thirds, nor income tax reduced, nor fuel sold at a ten percent plus cost rate on arrival at Colombo port, nor the flight of the wolves from the door, except, perhaps, beheld in a blissful wondrous trance, the miraculous sight of cows jumping over the moon.

There’s a vast difference between what was promised before the presidential election and what was actually done after winning the presidency. This has given rise to doubts about NPP’s credibility.

The opposition has united to capitalise on the pathetic failure of the NPP government to instantly deliver the goods as promised no sooner they gained untrammelled executive power.

The former leader of the opposition, SJB’s Sajith, has accused the NPP of making false promises and deceiving the people to ride to power. Former President Ranil Wickremesinghe has highlighted the glaring lack of competent, experienced people in the NPP camp. He has emphasised the need to send experienced personnel to Parliament saying, “You can’t work with babies in Parliament.”

Furthermore, two perturbing statements, one made by JVP Secretary Tilvin Silva and the other by Minister Vijitha Herath, disturb the people’s minds. Tilvin Silva’s statement that they never said that Rajapaksas’ hidden loot was in Uganda goes contrary to public recollections of recorded video footage aired on TV news of a female NPP lawyer on NPP stage claiming, ‘Rajapaksas’ hidden loot is in Uganda’ and asking, ‘do you want it brought back?’

Minister Vijitha Herath’s statement is far more serious. When passport queues, which they had promised to instantly eliminate on gaining power, intolerably kept lengthening, despite Vijitha Herath’s pledge on October 22 that it would vanish by week’s end. When  TV news focused on the plight of those forced to sleep overnight on pavements to ensure their place in the queue, enraged Minister Herath told the media: “The media is using the freedom of the wild ass. If it goes on like this, we will have to take steps to curb those who do.”

His outrageous statement threatening media freedom didn’t go down well with the public. They viewed it as a bid by the new Government to strangle the wild goose that had laid the nuggets of distortion on which the NPP themselves had ridden on social media to power.

A further move to clamp down on social media was the special circular issued to all school heads by the Ministry of Education on the use of “social media tools” in schools.

As the Daily Mirror reported on Friday, “According to the circular, social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Viber, and Telegram were initially introduced to help students recover missed learning opportunities during the COVID-19 pandemic. These tools are still widely used by students today,’ the ministry said. However, the ministry noted that it has been receiving reports of negative effects associated with students’ use of these applications, which has prompted the ministry to issue the circular.”

Isn’t this a most unpragmatic, impractical, and unsustainable childish way to prevent students, some of them above 18 and eligible to vote, from accessing the web during school hours when the current trend is to introduce AI in schools? Will it be public servants next?

At this rate, inexperience, incompetence, and ignorance may further dent the mass appeal of the new Cabinet and may adversely affect the prospects of the NPP’s largely unknown, untried, untested candidates to shine best at Thursday’s general elections. Who knows we might end up on Friday night with a hung Parliament.