I could not help but laugh this morning, reading how the Chief Minister (CM) of an Indian State Arunachal Pradesh defected from the Congress party with some 21 elected members to join a regional party supporting the BJP (opposition). In a way, the CM has 59 out of 60 seats in his support. This comes just 2 months after the Congress legally wrestled itself back in power with the Courts ruling in its favour. The State has seen a fair bit of political drama in the last few months, including the suicide of Mr. Pul, the person who became Chief Minister of the State for just a few days. I wonder if the drama is over?
Meanwhile, the politics in the State of Uttar Pradesh is getting fairly twisted too with Yadav senior and junior trying to assert "who is the Daddy" of the State. Will Akhilesh end up breaking away from his father's shadow and party, and align with Rahul Gandhi and his merry Congressmen in the State elections of 2017? Or, will Akhilesh's brave move motivate Rahul to do something similar? Such miracles are known to happen in politics, and for once BJP would be praying that it does not. Though, it would be praying of course that the water wars in the two southern States of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka play out in its favour.
Talking about the state of miracles, there may be a mega-miracle happening far away from our very own USI (Ununited States of India) in the nation of miracles called the USA.
The miracle of miracles that I am referring to is of course that all Trump supporters are praying for; Hillary will drop out of the Presidential race. Fighting Bernie Sanders then, will it be a cakewalk for Trump to the White House? I wouldn't advise the Trumpeters to open the bubbly as Sanders could be the one celebrating Woodstock in Washington. He has done the unexpected right thing by making friends with all Clinton supporters (by supporting her candidature of course), and there are plenty of Republicans who don't want Trump as President if Clinton is not the next best choice.
Finally, do I keep or chuck my Euros? Now, this question was posed to the Italians. The real ones, not the ones in India.
Saturday, September 17, 2016
Saturday, September 10, 2016
Will the real "Son of a Whore" please stand up.
He first challenged Donald Trump to a fist fight for calling a ban on Filipinos from entering the US; he then went on to slur President Obama for taking up the issue of "endorsed" extra-judicial killings of drug abusers in the Philippines. Well, apologies and denials by him have followed, but he has earned his country and himself some four days of negative fame globally. Did Duterte say what he did to prove something to his people? Did he think his sinking ratings would go up? After all "breaking bad" is in vogue. Good of him not to have threatened President Obama with extra-judicial killing for having experimented with weed in his college days.
President Obama, however, is made of better stuff. He comes across as very dignified, humble, and a man with a great sense of humour. More so, he seems to be quite forgiving. He forgave Hillary for her racial slurs against him in the 2008 elections, and he forgave Mr T too for calling him the worst President in US history. Forgave or not, he did meet his latest offender too, where the latter sought pardon and called it one big misunderstanding. Lately, the use of politically correct and parliamentary language has taken a back seat if not entirely pushed out of the car, even by the best educated.
President Duterte, a very educated man, a lawyer, had been expelled from a couple of schools for misconduct, which could be interpreted as smashing a square peg in a round hole. It is possibly the same attitude that has got him this far in politics in a nation notorious for an extremely high crime rate, which most experts believe has police, political and even judicial backing. In such a situation, would a tame parliamentarian survive? When the law becomes the very tool for the lawless to prosper and fails to protect the innocent, does the system not gravitate towards abandoning the legal system and do what is needed to restore the right order? Tough questions. In the long run, the vigilantism slips into excesses. No one obeys the law and extra-judicial methods only encourage settling of personal scores, more human rights violations, an even greater rebuttal by those with power; the result, total anarchy in society. In this case too, hard to tell if drug offences will go down. In my own nation too, there has been a crackdown on corruption. Frankly, at one level I would have wished our leader too endorsed the extra-judicial killing of the corrupt given its rise, but thankfully that's not the case. It keeps the faith alive in the system. It's a different matter that corruption has actually gone up and not down after the crackdown measures have been put in place. There is growing anger and impatience waiting and wanting to vent, and those in power, the world over have to cure and not exploit it. One can only hope we don't drift in a different direction, though the latest violent attacks on police personnel for enforcing law and order is pointing at a very frightening social order ahead in time.
The world was more or less outraged by the "son of a whore remark", but does the world show the same outrage when most US services (naval) personnel still consider Duterte's nation as a country of prostitutes? Something to think about when the leaders of many powerful nations are themselves guilty of showering leaders of various less powerful nations and organisations with derogatory names and titles that sound worse than being called a "son of a whore or bitch or gun or whatever."
President Obama, however, is made of better stuff. He comes across as very dignified, humble, and a man with a great sense of humour. More so, he seems to be quite forgiving. He forgave Hillary for her racial slurs against him in the 2008 elections, and he forgave Mr T too for calling him the worst President in US history. Forgave or not, he did meet his latest offender too, where the latter sought pardon and called it one big misunderstanding. Lately, the use of politically correct and parliamentary language has taken a back seat if not entirely pushed out of the car, even by the best educated.
President Duterte, a very educated man, a lawyer, had been expelled from a couple of schools for misconduct, which could be interpreted as smashing a square peg in a round hole. It is possibly the same attitude that has got him this far in politics in a nation notorious for an extremely high crime rate, which most experts believe has police, political and even judicial backing. In such a situation, would a tame parliamentarian survive? When the law becomes the very tool for the lawless to prosper and fails to protect the innocent, does the system not gravitate towards abandoning the legal system and do what is needed to restore the right order? Tough questions. In the long run, the vigilantism slips into excesses. No one obeys the law and extra-judicial methods only encourage settling of personal scores, more human rights violations, an even greater rebuttal by those with power; the result, total anarchy in society. In this case too, hard to tell if drug offences will go down. In my own nation too, there has been a crackdown on corruption. Frankly, at one level I would have wished our leader too endorsed the extra-judicial killing of the corrupt given its rise, but thankfully that's not the case. It keeps the faith alive in the system. It's a different matter that corruption has actually gone up and not down after the crackdown measures have been put in place. There is growing anger and impatience waiting and wanting to vent, and those in power, the world over have to cure and not exploit it. One can only hope we don't drift in a different direction, though the latest violent attacks on police personnel for enforcing law and order is pointing at a very frightening social order ahead in time.
The world was more or less outraged by the "son of a whore remark", but does the world show the same outrage when most US services (naval) personnel still consider Duterte's nation as a country of prostitutes? Something to think about when the leaders of many powerful nations are themselves guilty of showering leaders of various less powerful nations and organisations with derogatory names and titles that sound worse than being called a "son of a whore or bitch or gun or whatever."
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