 Today we are going to talk about the most recent events relating to the elections in the United States. I'm sure you are all familiar with the events that took place on the 6th of January. We will describe the events and then examine what are the implications of what happened on the 6th. This was indeed a historic moment for the United States. It was the biggest challenge to the democracy of the United States that happened. But of course this was not unexpected. It was right from the beginning, soon after the elections. And it became clear that the present president, Mr. Donald Trump, is not likely to be elected. He started saying that there is a lot of irregularity in the election process. And therefore he will not accept the results, even though the race was close in the beginning. And on a few occasions, Mr. Trump was leaving. But at the end, Mr. Joe Biden had a landslide victory. As you know, the American election system is very different from the system that we know. This is a direct election of the president, not through the parliament as it happens in our case. In the United States, for the Senate and the House of Representatives, the two Houses of the Parliament, elections are held separately for the Senate as well as for the House of Representatives. Only a part of the Senate is elected at the time of the presidential election. But these are not interconnected. You don't have to have a majority in parliament to be the president. The president has to get the majority of the electoral votes and also, of course, the popular votes. There are two ways of counting. That is all the votes that a candidate gets is counted. But that is not enough to win the elections. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but Donald Trump won the electoral vote. The electoral vote, as you may know, is based on the number of electoral votes in each state that one candidate gets. Depending on the size of the states, the number of seats are allotted. And if you win a majority in a particular state, you get all the electoral votes of that state. So what happens is there are some states which are considered battleground states as it were. Because there it is not clear who has the majority, whether the Democrats or the Republicans. So every time an election is held, it is predictable to know who will win New York, who will win California, etc. Because these are clearly unchangeable most of the time. But some of these small states where people keep swinging, that's why these are called the swing states, where you get the electoral votes in the swing states, they are the ones who normally win. So in this case, Mr. Biden got about 5 million votes more than President Trump. And he also got the required majority of the electoral votes. So it was very clear that Mr. Biden had won. And when he won the required number of electoral votes, normally what happens is the other candidate simply accepts defeat. And congratulate the newly elected president. And the process of transfer of power takes place. Normally the two of them, the outgoing president and the incoming president, spend time together, talk to each other about the responsibilities and things are handed over. And in America unlike in India, there is a specific period of time between the election and when the president takes over. Normally the election is in November and the handing over, taking over takes place on the 20th of January. These are all prescribed. But President Donald Trump, since you all know that he was very unpredictable and he was not willing to accept the defeat. And he started raising legal issues. This time the elections were held somewhat differently from the previous years because of the COVID, because of the coronavirus. A large number of people were allowed to vote by postal ballots and also early voting. So what Mr. Trump alleged was that in the process of this change of vote and larger number of ballots by post, somebody has cheated the elections. And therefore he claims that his victory has been stolen by the Democrats. And since Mr. Trump also got a large number of votes or the popular votes, something like 73 million, the race was close. So he claims that all these are being counted wrongly. All the votes have not been counted. There has been a lot of irregularities. And therefore he said, I will fight till the finish. So initially he took up these issues at the various state levels. In America unlike in India, the elections are conducted state by state. There is no central election commission. These are held in the states concerned. And the majority is declared by the governor of the state. So there is an election process in each state. And wherever the race was closed, Mr. Trump and his friends and supporters raised the issue of the majority in each of these states. And each of these states, they considered recounted where necessary and took a long time. And finally declared that Mr. Biden was the next president. And Kamala Harris would be the next vice president. So at that point in time, instead of declaring or accepting defeat, President Trump exorted his supporters, many of them extremists and people who are willing to do anything for President Trump. We told them that we must now be ready to fight. When he said we should be ready to fight, he meant fight, physical fight. And everybody hoped that he will not do that. And at the appropriate time, he will be dropped. But even today, when there are only 10 more days for him to continue as president, he has not conceded. He has not accepted defeat. So at each stage of the preparation and the declaration of the elections, he tried to block the declaration. And constitutionally, the US Congress that's a joint session of the Senate as well as the House of Representatives are supposed to meet on 6th of January. This is prescribed date and receive reports from all the states, verify that these are accurate and then finally make a declaration. So 6th of January is very crucial in every election. So having failed to get his point accepted by various other levels, Mr. Trump said he will prevent the meeting of the US Congress and thus disrupt the process. So if the Congress cannot meet, how can the results be declared? So, but even when all this was happening and he was saying all these people just did not believe that a president will do anything of that kind. But sure enough, on the 6th, when the Congress was about to meet, thousands of his supporters went to what is called the Capitol Hill. You know, what is Capitol Hill? It is the center of the other parliament, both the Senate and the Congress have separate halls in parliament in the Capitol Hill. And sometimes they have joint sessions. So joint session is supposed to be presented over by the vice president. And the vice president of course was President Trump's closest official. So four years, Mr. Pence, Mike Pence was the closest supporter and associate of the president. So first, the president tried to persuade the vice president not to hold this meeting or to say that if there is disturbance, he will not hold the meeting. And therefore, the results cannot be held. So President Trump put pressure on Mr. Pence, but Mr. Pence being a fairly decent gentleman, he said that he had to fulfill his constitutional responsibility, which is to ascertain the voting pattern in various states and then declare the elections. And then these thousands of people, many of them armed with guns and various other bombs and various other things, and they came for battle. And they even managed to get into the Congress halls. And obviously the law enforcement authorities did not expect that. And they did not have enough forces to block them. So before the law enforcement authorities could get closer, a section of the demonstrators, there was supposed to be demonstrators. In fact, many people went there to demonstrate not to disrupt, not to attack. But a section of these people were ready to attack. And President Trump kept on telling them to go and attack on Twitter and Facebook and various other forms. And social media, in fact, had to close down because the president was asking for a rebellion, insurrection is the word. So they got into the parliament building and threatened to even kill the congressmen and the senators. So particularly they were removed to safety while these people, you know, wildly clothed and looking very disturbing. Figures, you must have all seen it on television. They went as much as into the Speaker's Chamber and wherever they could get. And it took them a lot of time to clear the mark of the Congress. Meanwhile, three people had died because of various health problems. One lady was shot by the police and the police officer was killed. So a rough estimate about five people got killed. We don't know the exact figures, but according to the police, five people have been killed and these people were cleared out of the parliament house. At that point, Mr. Pence, the vice president, if he wanted to cooperate with the president, he could have said, this is too much of disturbance and now it is late night, so I'm not going to do anything and if he could have gone home, but he did not do that. He decided to stay and then complete the process with the protection of the armed forces. And it took him the whole night. The whole process ended only by about 4 a.m. of the 7th of January. And clearly, of course, the victory was that of Biden and Kamala Harris. At this point, there was so much of criticism of what President Trump had done, not only in the United States but also all around the world. All of them wondered what was happening to American democracy and there was a lot of criticism in America itself and outside. And somehow Mr. Trump realized that his days are over and then he made this statement saying that though I do not accept the election results and he kept repeating that this was stolen by me, from me. I am the winner of the presidency but in the circumstance in which all these happened, I'll be agreeable to have a peaceful transfer of power on the 20th. So which meant that from January 7th to 20th, the 13 days, it was uncertain as to what he would do. Interestingly, even now people don't know what he would do because he continues to be president till the afternoon of 20th January. In the morning, the new president will be sworn in, the vice president will be sworn in and they are supposed to go to the White House and meet the outgoing president, say goodbye. Till then the authority is with the president, though he is called a lame duck president in the sense that he cannot take new orders, he cannot declare war, he cannot change policy but he is supposed to maintain the law and order and keep the machinery going. And during this whole period from November 3rd to January 20th, there's a transition process. Mr. Biden has already appointed his Secretary of State and other cabinet members. He has appointed various senior officials but he has to appoint altogether a political appointees about 5000 to 6000 appointments he have to make at the highest levels. And that process is continuing. Initially, the White House that is the president did not cooperate. He did not even sign the bill approving the expenditure for the country. At a time when coronavirus has been aggravated, the vaccine is to be distributed. So the time of great crisis because even today each day the number of deaths in the United States is going up each day higher than before and there is complete panic in certain states where the hospitals are overflowing. It is true that a vaccine has been developed or several vaccines have been developed but there is lot of work reaching it to the people and he had no money because the Treasury was not allowed to be operated. But fortunately on 27th December he signed that bill and in my previous lecture I talked about it because it was in that bill that the support for the Tibetans bill was also included and a new budget was provided for the Tibetans which was actually a policy change. And similarly now the outgoing president has taken another policy decision which he should not have done is to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan. United States like India believes only in one China and Taiwan the relationship was only commercial. But for the first time in history the American president that is outgoing president has declared that we will have diplomatic relations with Taiwan and Taiwan also in the sense it is virtually declaring war against China because China believes that Taiwan is part of China and by declaring that we have diplomatic relations with Taiwan it is a very major development. But unless this is finalized this is cleared by the new president it may not be effective and therefore that is why we don't hear much about it but such a declaration has been made. So anything can happen between now and the 20th and that is what is the anxiety about the American election process. What is it that he can do? He can open a nuclear war if he wants. He can do since he is so derailed, his mind is so disturbed. He could do various things. He has sacked several people. Many people have abandoned him. So now what's going on in the US is everybody is wondering what to do with this gentleman till the 20th and he should not be allowed to do the kind of things he did on the 6th. Peace of course keeping quiet. The process is on. There are two ways in which you can remove a president by force. The easiest way is what is called the amendment, 25th amendment to the American constitution which was enacted after the murder of the assassination of Kennedy because when Kennedy was assassinated people thought suppose he had not died and he was badly injured but incapable of looking after his job, then what would you do with him? And therefore a new act was passed by the Congress saying that such a case when a president is incapable of handling his job he can be removed by the vice president with the support of 50% of the cabinet. So the vice president calls a meeting of the cabinet and says that I feel that President Trump has gone off his mind and therefore whatever he does we cannot accept and so we physically remove him. For that you need a vice president's authority as well as half of the cabinet. That is one option. The other option is to you all know another way to remove a president is to impeach him. Impeach him means the first the U.S. Congress that is a House of Representatives has to vote on impeachment and if it is passed it goes to the Senate and if Senate also passes it the president leaves. But in the history of the U.S. no impeachment has been effective because if the Congress, the president has a majority in the Congress then it won't go over but in the case of Trump it was there was an impeachment by the Congress but he had a majority in the Senate and therefore it did not pass. So the idea was that either to do the 25th amendment for which you need the initiative of the vice president or the Congress initiates an impeachment process. So for the sake of these 10 days mind you they are planning to take one of these actions and we hear that the vice president is not willing to use the 25th amendment. He says let us not use it let us keep it till if he goes mad or something and then we may have to do it. Otherwise you go via the impeachment process. Therefore today that is the Monday is just opening up in the U.S. a bill will be presented to the U.S. Congress and if it passes it goes to the Senate but unfortunately the Senate is not in session. The Senate will be in session only on the 19th. So till 19th they have to wait for the Senate to consider the impeachment process and the 20th is the presidential form of installation of the new president. But according to the law the impeachment process can go on even after the new president has been sworn in against strange regulations. So they say that maybe we are not able to remove him before the 20th but even after the 20th he can be declared disabled and then he cannot become president again because now President Trump thinks that he can come back in 2024 and win the elections because he has 73 million supporters. And so this is this very strange situation in the U.S. today. So you need to follow this minutes by minutes as to what is happening because what happens in these 10 days is going to be crucial for the United States because he can do anything which will harm the reputation of the United States. But so far nothing has happened and in my view the U.S. election process has overcome the problem. If the vice president had surrendered or the parliament could not adopt the resolution then there would have been total chaos. But even though the law enforcement authorities were not able to control what has happened, the attack but now things are normal and it is only a matter of completing these 10 days. So if nothing happens, if the impeachment process does not go forward and the Article 25 is not used, Amendment 25 is not used, the president will cease to be president in the afternoon 21st and if he doesn't leave like an ordinary citizen who has got into the White House he will be escorted out, virtually dragged out of the White House. That would be a great disgrace to an American president. But this is the situation that this has come about. The whole world has condemned this action. One of the first ones to criticize it was our own Prime Minister who is supposed to be a friend of President Trump. But that is all, it is a matter of two heads of government doing business. I don't think there was any emotional attachment between the two and therefore our Prime Minister openly said that what had happened was unacceptable and the president should accept the verdict of the elections. And similarly most other countries have also said that I believe UK and France are the only two countries have not said anything much. China is of course ridiculing the system of elections in the United States and they are enjoying the fact that a man like Trump whom they hated was being defeated and beaten by the people. So things will be alright once the new president takes over and he will declare his policies. Much of it is already known. He has taken action on the Paris Agreement. He has appointed a special representative for climate change. But the first priority is coronavirus and he has set up a machinery and mechanism but still he has not been able to control the deaths and hospitalizations in many states. So his first priority will be to reach the vaccine to all the people. And that will take time. So the priority has to be established. First they will be given to health workers and will be given to aged people perhaps and that line is being established and we are hoping that by the end of January things may be under control in the United States. But as you all know there is a second wave of infections which started in the UK. The UK is now under complete lockdown. Germany, Austria, Italy, Sweden, all these countries are in deep trouble. Lots of deaths are taking place and therefore this is not the time that we can engage in this luxury of these political battles. But that is really what has happened. One more thing, two things additional. In one case you must have heard of a gentleman, an Indian, Indian origin American from Kerala. He was found with the Indian flag in this particular demonstration. I know him personally, he is a very nice, decent gentleman. He is not the one who will go and attack because he was conference. But he believed that he believes even now that Trump had won the elections and therefore he decided to join the protest. That is fine. But what he did was he carried not only the American flag but also an Indian flag as he walked into this. And he also handed that Indian flag to various other Indians, all of them wave this flag and so on. And this was caught on camera because in America it doesn't mean anything. Anybody can fly any flag in America. Like us, there is no flag code. Ordinary people can fly their flags wherever they want. In the villages if you go you will see in many places people have raised the national flag on top of their houses. There is no restriction as such. And other nationalities who have become American citizens, they also come and wave their flag. So nobody cares. But the fact that this was caught on camera and shown on Indian media, there was a big uproar here that the Indian national flag was used in this protest. And people were very angry. But this gentleman was quite willing to explain his position. So he went to the, you must have seen him on many Indian channels. And he said two things. He said, first of all, I thought this was a peaceful protest. And that is not true. He should have known as an intelligent man. He knew this was not a peaceful protest. And he did not go into the US Congress. He was outside. When he saw there was violence, he left. So he said, I went there thinking that this is a peaceful protest. Unfortunately it turned violent and it should not have turned violent and therefore I have come back. But why the Indian flag? He said, because I wanted to show to the world that people of Indian origin, American citizens of Indian origin are also supporting some of them are supporting Mr. Trump. This is true. 27% of the Indian Americans voted for President Trump. And many of them probably were there in that demonstration. But in our situation, our national flag cannot be used in such occasions. So he was using the national flag of India simply as an identification of the Indian Americans who were supportive of President Trump. But actually he has not violated any law. There is no law in the United States that the foreign flag cannot be filmed. So they are not going to arrest him or they are not going to do anything. Because there are so many flags of Vietnam and Cambodia and Greece and Italy were all flown. But we have taken this very seriously and there is even a case has been filed by a private party in Delhi. And maybe my friend may not be able to come back to India very easily because of this. So it was an unnecessary complication in which we have got involved. We should have also ignored it, but a lot of sentiment about the national flag. That's a side story. Otherwise India is not involved. This is an internal process in the United States and we don't need to be concerned about that. But like the rest of the world, we are concerned about what is going to happen. And I'm seeing news on the CNN that the House of Representatives has already started the process of impeachment. Because the Vice President is not agreeing to using the 25th Amendment. So this is it. But in a way I would say that American democracy has not been affected by all this because the results are legitimate results in an election. But this is not the first time that in American history that fighting has taken place after elections. I do not know the exact dates, but there are several times this has happened. And as you know Abraham Lincoln himself fought a war, a civil war in order to preserve democracy on account of the question of slavery. So violence in exercising democratic rights or democratic privileges is not new in the United States. But many people are saying, how can this happen in the United States? This happens in third world countries. This happens in poor countries, underdeveloped countries etc. That's not true. It has happened everywhere. In our country it has happened. We have seen legislators fighting inside the parliament throwing chairs at each other. We have seen it in other countries in Japan, we have seen it in Taiwan, we have seen it. So it's nothing exceptional. But we are shocked when you see it happening in the oldest democracy in the world. But as long as it comes back to the process, no process is disturbed, there is no reason for anxiety. So this is what I wanted to tell you today for you. And of course by the time you take your examination situation may have changed, new situation may have developed, but this is a historical process about which you should know what the reasons were, what exactly happened, what are the consequences and it is not over yet. Next week also you will have to follow what is happening and you must have in your notebook or whatever record we have, you must have the reasons for it, the results of it and the implications for it. Whether it is at the preliminary stage, preliminary exam stage or the main stage or interview stage, these developments can come up because this is one of the most significant events of history, not only this year maybe for several years to come. Thank you very much. We'll see you next week with a new subject and then we'll discuss. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.