FOR a while now, we have been having a laugh at the United States. It is a spectacle that is beamed live over the last six months or so that threatened to upend its democracy as a result of a wellspring of lies coming from the mouth of the most powerful man in the country.
President Donald Trump refused to admit defeat in an election he lost and came up with a slew of alternative facts, such as he had handily won but instead victory was stolen from him.
It was something one would expect to hear from khaki-clad ex-military strongmen in countries that the Americans often disparagingly called banana republics. The fact that it was echoed by many elected officials from his own party, is both a surprise and a worry.
A surprise because they must have known of Trump's cuckoo theory, and yet embraced it. A worry because it got his base riled up that led to the storming of the Capitol last week and subsequently a general state of heightened alert all over ahead of Joe Biden's inauguration.
Sometimes the cost of a lie goes beyond the obvious, and in this case it caused a systemic distrust of the election process. Intense, unbridled politicking that sowed lies and untruths had raised doubt and suspicion about the sanctity of the electoral system.
The allegations of frauds and misdeeds from the president and his sycophants have damaged and tainted the reputation of these institutions that probably will take years to repair. What have the Trump shenanigans got to do with us here in Malaysia?
Well Trump's strategy of boldfaced lies, and the millions who believe him, must serve as a cautionary tale to us — it is a fact that people lie, and the subset of us who are our politicians, do so,too. They may not be as resourceful, original or imaginative as Trump — not yet, perhaps — but they do shade the truth now and again.
Trump's four-year reality show suggests that lies do work, and at times, they work rather too well. Politicians being miserly with the truth are not a rarity, but someone who could persist with a lie despite all the facts is truly amazing, and may go far in politics.
By all expectations, Trump will leave office soon. Maybe this is a karmic comeuppance to the US, which had always been quick to lecture countries on how inferior their democracies were. It had been known to be sending resources and personnel all over the world, including our country, to promote its brand of democracy.
But I digress. We may express disbelief in what is happening in the US, a country that prides itself on being the bastion of modern democracy, but we should be alert, too, to our politicians who are quick to employ ruse and untruths when advancing their political agenda.
The institutions be damned. We have such politicians, too, yes we do, who attempted subterfuge, misinformation as well as a wink and a nudge and an economy with the truth.
While they have a way to go to reach Trump's exalted heights, it is a vice they can learn fast, especially when they see what happened in the US — someone of influence said their votes were unsafe, repeatedly ad nauseam, and opinions were swayed and perception coloured.
Here at home, over the last several elections there have been efforts to cast doubt on our electoral process. A very successful misinformation campaign to suggest that there was massive fraud in the form of thousands of foreign workers being registered to vote and hundreds of planes being readied to move them to various constituencies to tip the scale for the government then.
These were repeated often enough by politicians who knew better, or at least never corrected when confronted with the fact, led to a general distrust of the electoral process.
There were cases of dead people on the electoral roll, for instance, that could be easily explained and in actual fact not fraud nor can they meaningfully affect election outcomes, suddenly being presented as organised tampering of the democratic process.
It did not matter that for those who understood the voting process, and many politicians do too very well, that it was almost an impossibility to do so but it made good political strategy to suggest complicity by the government then.
The shrill of politics and politicians brandishing the cheat cards were enough to spook election officials that made us regress towardsa1950s solution of staining our index fingers.
Suggesting democracy being compromised worked, and this strategy could be employed again. We have had also politicians who were too free with their rhetoric and imagination, telling of ballot boxes being tossed off boats and helicopters, stuffed in transit or power being cut off at counting centres for the classic ballot switcheroo.
All these to fuel anger and stoke fear without evidence, but merely the suggestion of possibility being turned into facts. For sure, democracy would be at risk if faith and trust in the integrity of key institutions are questioned and diminished.
Politicians and political operatives' eyes are always on our hearts and minds. At times, truth is an inconvenience. Nevertheless, we have been lucky that despite these tendencies, there has never been any attempt by politicians to suggest large-scale fraud and that results be ignored.
One reason for that is results of late have shown that no one had a monopoly on victory. Also since the first general election in 1955, Malayans and Malaysians have shown their ability to accept election results; we have had changes in governments and we have shown the ability to live with that.
Often though, politicians are the ones having trouble accepting results. Let's hope Trump's tendencies do not rub off on our politicians here to wilfully manipulate their support base by lying repeatedly.
The writer, a former NSTP group managing editor, is now a social media adviser and can be reached at zainulisa@gmail.com