Will Mugabe be toast with Trump next?
2017-11-16 10:22
Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe seems to have sealed his
own fate.
He got rid of his loyal vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa,
in order to clear the way for his wife, Grace, to become the president in
waiting. By doing so, he pushed the side of the presidential bubble he has
lived in for nearly forty years too hard and it burst.
He and his family are now under house arrest. The best-case
scenario is that he now resigns and new national elections are held. In the meantime,
there could be an interim government of national unity.
On the other side of the world, US President Donald Trump
has another kind of problem. With the bursting of the Harvey
Weinstein bubble in Hollywood, powerful people can no longer expect serial
abuse of young women to be kept secret or be overlooked in some way.
The needle of ethical conduct has created such huge momentum
in the re-perception of what is proper and what is not that it is destroying reputations
and careers all over the place.
If the Weinstein bubble had burst at the same time last year,
it is extremely likely that Trump would have had to bow out of the presidential
race after his conversation in a caravan had been revealed. He used such
disgusting language about women and how power could make them do anything, that
I cannot repeat his exact words. I would have to use asterisks.
He now faces a huge dilemma. He is sitting on the fence
about the possible removal of Roy Moore as an Alabama Senate nominee in the
forthcoming special election in December. Moore has been accused of having inappropriate
sexual contact with teenage girls when he was assistant district attorney in
his early 30s.
If Trump backs the removal of Moore, who fervently denies
the allegations, people will ask the same about him. He says all the women who
came forward with the same accusation during the presidential election were
lying; as does Moore. Trump's only response can be that he knows he is telling
the truth about his past behaviour whereas he cannot be so certain about Moore.
That seems to be a very flimsy answer in light of his recorded comments in the
caravan.
If he does not back the removal of Moore, that speaks for
itself. So either way he is caught in a trap.
Once a flag goes up changing the game – in this case where
the border lies between the acceptable and unacceptable treatment of women by
men – the game is over for many of the players who were playing according to
the previous rules. Trump falls into that category according to his own words.
Bill Clinton, if he were president today, would certainly
now be impeached by Congress and have to resign for his behaviour towards
Monica Lewinsky, amongst others. Trump may face the same consequences and,
rather like Nixon with the Watergate tapes, wish he had never been recorded
saying what he did.
Who will be the next piece of toast as a result of straying
outside the conventional rules of the political game or being found guilty of
sexual misconduct, or both? Mugabe and Trump may be leading the race for the
toaster, but there are surely others on the way. Keep your eyes wide open like
the fox.
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