Thursday 14th May, 2026

US President Donald Trump’s recent statement at a business summit that he would leave the White House in eight or nine years is widely considered a light-hearted remark intended to provoke his critics. It has apparently had the desired impact, but it has also evoked the dreadful memories of his refusal to concede defeat after losing the 2020 presidential election, his unruly supporters’ attacks on the US Capitol, and his previous statements that he would seek a third term. The US Constitution prevents any American President from seeking a third term and is robust enough to keep the likes of Trump in check. But Trump and his fellow Republicans are doing everything in their power to win the upcoming midterm elections and have employed some controversial methods to achieve that goal.

President Trump, who is trying to redraw the world map, according to his whims and fancies, to expand the US territory, as part of his grandiose MAGA initiative, has resorted to gerrymandering (or ‘Trumpmandering’) in the name of redistricting to make his Republican Party great. On Monday, his party’s efforts to secure an undue advantage at the midterm elections by resorting to gerrymandering tactics such as “cracking” and “packing” voters in some states, received a judicial boost.

On Monday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Alabama Republicans to pursue a new electoral map that will be more favourable to them in the midterm elections due in November. The apex court ruling was reportedly split 6–3 along ideological lines; six conservative justices formed the majority while the court’s three liberal justices dissented, according to media reports. It has overturned a lower court decision and narrowed the landmark Voting Rights Act. The lower court had decided that the Republicans’ preferred electoral map intentionally discriminated against Black voters and unlawfully diluted their voting power.

The main allegation against the Republicans’ electoral map, which will now become official, thanks to the Supreme Court endorsement, is that it seeks to “pack” or cram many Black voters into a single district while “cracking” (distributing) other Black communities across several white-majority districts. Observers have pointed out that the Republican strategy will prevent the Black voters from electing candidates of their choice in a fair manner although they make up about 25% of Alabama’s population. The Republican redistricting plan is antithetical to the democratic ideals the US claims to cherish.

Alabama has been at the centre of the US racial conflict and civil rights campaigns by Blacks and therefore regarded as the cradle of defining battles of the American civil rights movement. Black Americans in Alabama were victims of racial segregation in schools and public transport, barbaric violence unleashed by the Ku Klux Klan, disenfranchisement and economic exclusion. It was the intense civil rights struggles in Alabama that brought Black rights icons such as Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr. into the national spotlight. The situation has improved significantly thanks to civil rights struggles and pathbreaking judicial decisions, but Alabama is not totally free from tensions over racial inequality, and therefore it is feared that the Supreme Court decision under discussion will weaken the Voting Rights Act to the extent of paving the way for the revival of discriminatory practices such as voter suppression and diluting the political influence of the Blacks. One can only hope that what is feared will not come to pass.

The Supreme Court endorsement of the controversial redistricting map is sure to have implications for other states. The legal victory for the Republicans’ efforts signals a wider issue that severely erodes the credibility and legitimacy of the US as a leading democracy and its campaign for promoting global democracy. How would the US have reacted if a government in the Global South had resorted to gerrymandering? It would have condemned such a move in the strongest possible terms and pontificated on the virtues of democracy and the need to respect the rights of all communities. The protection of civil rights, like charity, should begin at home.

Wednesday 13th May, 2026

Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa yesterday visited the Commission to Investigate Allegations of Bribery or Corruption (CIABOC), made a statement on the Airbus bribery scandal and returned home. A large number of his supporters flocked to Colombo to pledge solidarity with him. Speaking at a District Coordination Committee meeting at the Matale District Secretariat yesterday, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake stated that nobody was above the law, and anyone could be questioned in an investigation. He claimed that his predecessors had violated the Constitution and committed other offences, with impunity. His reference was obviously to President Rajapaksa making a statement to the CIABOC. By making that claim, President Dissanayake left room for allegations that he has a vested interest in the ongoing Airbus scandal investigation and defends the CIABOC action against Rajapaksa.

Yesterday’s show of strength near the CIABOC was organised by the SLPP. It is an affront to the intelligence of the public for anyone to claim that it was the result of a spontaneous outburst of public anger at an alleged move to frame former President Rajapaksa. Such protests are tantamount to attempts to intimidate the CIABOC. It is the organisers of such events who were responsible for Rajapaksa’s defeat in the 2015 presidential election and his ouster as Prime Minister in 2022, when they acted like the proverbial monkey that killed his sleeping royal master by striking a mosquito with the king’s own sword. They attacked the peaceful Aragalaya protesters at Galle Face, triggering widespread retaliatory attacks. The rest is history.

President Dissanayake yesterday said in Matale that his government had ensured that nobody was above the law and urged the public to bring instances of selective law enforcement, if any, to his attention. Is he unaware that the NPP politicians are more equal than others before the law? Kumara Jayakody was not arrested over the coal procurement scam, which is believed to have caused a loss of more than Rs. 10 billion to the state coffers, and led to a situation where a colossal amount of diesel has to be burnt daily to produce power to meet a generation shortfall at Norochcholai due to the use of low-grade coal imported by a company favoured by the government while Jayakody was the Minister of Energy. Power tariffs have been increased to recover the losses caused by the substandard coal imports. It may be recalled that Keheliya Rambukwella was arrested and prosecuted during the previous government for procuring substandard medicines while he was the Health Minister. That administration initially defended Rambukwella but did not stoop so low as to prevent his arrest and make a cover-up attempt by setting up a presidential commission of inquiry to probe all drug procurement issues in the Health Ministry under successive governments. President Dissanayake has appointed a presidential commission to investigate alleged irregularities in coal procurement since 2009! They must be probed, but the allegations against Jayakody are so serious that they should have been investigated separately on a priority basis.

Ironically, while President Dissanayake was waxing eloquent about his government’s commitment to upholding the rule of law, bashing his predecessors for having violated the Constitution, and claiming that his government had ended the culture of impunity, the Joint Opposition levelled a very serious allegation against him. Former Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs Prof. G. L. Peiris, addressing the media in Colombo, said that at a recent May Day rally, President Dissanayake had committed a serious offence by asking the public to get ready to hail the judgement to be delivered in a court case on 25 May. Pointing out that only the judge who heard a case was privy to the judgement therein before it was delivered and could not inform a third party of it or have any discussion thereon, Prof. Peiris said interference with the judiciary was a very serious offence, according to the Constitution, and a person who committed it was liable to one-year imprisonment and the suspension of civic disabilities for five years. He said the Joint Opposition had brought the President’s statement at issue to the attention of the Chief Justice and would take it up with international professional associations.

The public may not have a high opinion of the Opposition, which has quite a few tainted politicians among its ranks, but shouldn’t the JVP-NPP government and their leaders turn the searchlight inwards and put their own house in order before preaching to others about the virtues of good governance?

Tuesday 12th May, 2026

US President Donald Trump yesterday rejected Iran’s response to his peace proposal. He wants the conflict ended on his own terms, but Iran is not amenable to that idea. Oil prices have gone up again.

The economic cost of the US-Israeli war on Iran is incalculable, as is obvious. There has been a welcome pause in the conflict, thanks to a fragile ceasefire, but economies across the world are still reeling due to a global energy crisis. CEO of Saudi Aramco Amin Nasser is of the view that the world has lost about one billion barrels of oil over the past two months, and it will take energy markets a considerable time to stabilise even if the oil supplies resume via the Hormuz Strait, the closure of which has curtailed shipping and sent energy prices through the roof. It is not only energy supplies that have suffered due to the US-Israel military campaign; many countries are experiencing crippling fertiliser shortages as well, so much so that the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has warned of a possible decline in global agricultural output. Most of all, the human cost of the war has been enormous for Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who considers the war on Iran a dream come true for him, and is trying to turn his country’s military might into political gain, has reportedly said that there is still “work to be done” in Iran. He says Iran has retained many of the capabilities it had at the start of the war. Iran has not given up its enriched uranium or dismantled its nuclear sites, he has said. This claim is at variance with President Trump’s statement that the US military has “beaten and completely decimated” Iran. Netanyahu himself has also bragged that Iran has been militarily weakened as never before.

Netanyahu wants enriched uranium in Iran removed urgently. He says that can be done as part of an agreement to be reached. He has stopped short of mentioning any timeline for the proposed task. Trump has expressed a similar view. An Iranian news outlet linked to the country’s armed forces has denied reports that Tehran agreed to allow its enriched uranium stocks to be removed as part of talks with the United States. Thus, the uranium issue is sure to stand in the way of finding a lasting solution to the West Asia conflict, saving lives and properties and facilitating uninterrupted energy and fertiliser supplies via the Hormuz chokepint.

The US-Israeli military campaign has apparently strengthened Iran’s resolve to acquire nuclear capability. In a world where nuclear weapons are the currency of power, Tehran is not likely to give up its nuclear programme. Any country with nukes is a danger to the world, but only the US has so far carried out nuclear attacks. Not even North Korea has done so. Those who got a head start in the nuclear race decades ago have built huge nuke stockpiles, which are believed to be sufficient to blow up this planet several times over. The new world order based on the law of the jungle has left many countries struggling to safeguard their independence, and some of them are pursuing their nuclear ambitions in keeping with what can be described as the de Gaulle doctrine.

Charles de Gaulle rightly argued that no country without the atomic bomb could properly consider itself independent. He maintained that national sovereignty required an autonomous nuclear force, which he called the force de frappe, which alone, in his opinion, was the ultimate guarantee of political independence and great-power status. So, it is only natural that countries that feel threatened and have the wherewithal are trying either to shore up their nuclear stockpiles or to arm themselves with nukes.

While Trump is devising ways and means of grabbing Iran’s enriched uranium, in a dramatic turn of events, the FBI and other federal agencies have launched investigations into the deaths or disappearances of about 10 top US nuclear and space scientists, according to international media reports. US House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer has suggested, in an interview with Fox News, that there has been a foreign involvement in these deaths and disappearances. Republican Congressman Eric Burlison has claimed they have “all the hallmarks of a foreign operation” and cited China, Russia and Iran as potential lines of inquiry.

Self-righteous powerful nations’ calls for nuclear non-proliferation to make the world safe ring hollow. If the much-peddled argument that no more countries should acquire nuclear capability to ensure global safety is to gain credibility and wider acceptance, the proponents of it must accelerate nuclear disarmament, decommission their arsenals and lead by example. Most of all, they ought to take cognisance of what US President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in his famous “Cross of Iron speech” on war in 1953, highlighting the opportunity cost of military spending and stressing that resources used on weapons are stolen from the people struggling to meet their basic needs: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.” How true!