By Jude Josue L. Sabio .
“LET'S have trial by combat,” proclaimed former New York Mayor Rudy Guiliani, a lawyer who has stood loyally for US President Donald Trump, immediately presaging the violent Capitol incident.
As for me, election by combat happens when election by ballot fails.
All over the world, societies came under the rule of a single ruler whose power was inherited within his family or dynasty. History saw the rise and fall of rulers and dynasties in the East and West.
In the near east, the most prominent early kingdoms arose in what is now Iran. Farther east, princely kingdoms came and fell in what is now Mongolia, China and Japan, in the Indian subcontinent and in Asia especially in what is now the Indochina and areas around Sumatra, Java and the Malay peninsula.
Following the death of prophet Mohammad, the early Arab Islamic states, later represented prominently by the Turkish Ottoman empire and Turco-Mongol Mughal empire, were ruled by a Caliph or Sultan.
In the west, the most prominent is the early Roman empire that rose after the civil war following the assassination of Julius Caesar in the Senate. First ruled by a principate under Augustus, it was later ruled by an emperor, not a king.
The Romans took an oath never to restore the monarchy after Lucretia, a noblewoman, was raped by a royal prince from the Etruscan monarchy that ruled Rome, triggering the ouster of the monarchy and establishing the Roman republic that preceded the Roman empire.
Throughout Europe, rule by a single ruler known as a king, emperor or czar or any other title, became entrenched for hundreds of years.
In the long age of kings and emperors spanning the entire globe since the first recorded city states in Mesopotomia, the rulers and their dynasties privately owned the huge lands that came under their rule. Power was transferred by inheritance within a family or dynasty.
When inheritance was disrupted, there ensued wars of succession which became an election by combat.
Except for the brief direct democracy in Athens in antiquity, the election by the people of a ruler was unheard of throughout history until the rise of American democracy in modern times.
After gaining independence from the British King, the 13 American colonies established a federal government following a brief experiment with a weak confederacy. In the confederacy, there was no President, only a Congress. Later to strengthen governance, a federal constitution was adopted installing a President, instead of a King or Emperor.
In the American model, presidential power is not transferred by inheritance, but by an election. Evolving through time, the electoral system made the people elect the President through the ballot, although it is mixed with the electoral college vote.
Election is not the only significant contribution of American democracy. The federal constitution explicitly divided governmental powers into three separate and distinct branches: executive power to be exercised by the President, legislative power to be exercised by a Senate and the House of Representatives, and a judicial power to be exercised by the judiciary headed by the federal Supreme Court.
Never before in the history of the world has succession by election in a tripartite government ever been adopted as a political principle in founding a nation.
This system immediately inspired the French revolution to a certain extent when it also later adopted the limited and later broad suffrage in its republic that evolved through its tumultuous political history.
Unlike the American model that has been stable for more than two hundred years, the French system underwent long periods of instability, although it maintained the principle of the right to vote in its republics down to its present Fifth Republic. We have been witnessing the elections in France where the French people elect their President presently in the person of Emmanuel Macron.
Ever since the rise of the great American democracy in the late 18th century, the world has never been the same again.
We have witnessed countries being ruled by leaders called President succeeding each other through elections. We have seen and heard countries having their institutions similar to the American legislature and judiciary.
Countries across the globe like our own have the trappings of American democracy.
Even in China, we see and hear of a President in the person of Xi Jinping, even if China is a one-party communist state. Earlier a communist state like China, Russia now is ruled by an elected President in the person of Vladimir Putin.
This shows how pervasive and immense is the global impact of the American democracy in global political development.
Against this backdrop, the Capitol violence in the US is staggering in terms of its global impact. Up until then, we have never heard of a presidential claim of massive fraud of such a scale and publicity as what has been unravelled.
The peaceful mass protest that later led to the melee is based on a claim of massive fraud in the presidential election. To cap it all, it is made by none other than the incumbent President Donald Trump himself.
This is different from what happened to Al Gore when he ran against George Bush. Unlike Gore who as incumbent vice president merely conceded after reports emerged of electoral fraud, Trump is now the President who has consistently defied and denounced the results of the election as fraudulent.
In an almost hour-long speech before his supporters on that fateful day broadcast around the world, Trump tirelessly stood and spoke, painstakingly relating how he was already winning by an insurmountable landslide until at about 10 pm when his votes were suddenly overtaken by those of his opponent.
He claimed that his votes were stolen from him to favor his opponent, in a somewhat familiar pattern of vote switching through the electronic counting system. Coming from Trump himself, the allegation assumed a presidential gravitas seen and heard not only in America but also around the democratic world.
Trump’s speech is not only unprecedented but also electrifying in the scale of the scandal hitting the very democracy that America is famous for around the democratic world.
The mass protest is not like the upheavals in the late 1980s in countries in eastern Europe against Soviet communist rule that came about during the downfall of the Soviet Union leading to its fragmentation into several independent democratic countries.
It is not like the Arab Spring protests across countries in North Africa and Arabia peninsula that called for democracy against dictatorial regimes that came crashing only to be replaced by democratic governments in its aftermath.
It is not like the democracy protests recently in Hongkong that demand for democracy against communist rule from mainland China.
The protest is rather against the very system of election that is the foundation of American democracy. It is against the failure of the judicial and legislative system to protect the integrity of the ballot.
It is against the massive fraud that undermines American democracy.
On a global scale, it stands as a determined foe against electoral fraud anywhere around the democratic world.
Since the allegation of vote stealing comes from an incumbent President, the first ever in American history, it has proven unwieldy, disastrous and fatal. Inevitably, it led to the protesters’ assault of the Capitol building never before seen in the more than 200 years of American democracy.
The allegation of massive electoral fraud was so powerful that Jake Angeli, donning his now famous fur headgear with horns, was driven to take over the Senate presidential seat and declare Trump as president.
It was so powerful that Barnett mocked Nancy Pelosi by sitting on her chair with his leg on her table.
It was so powerful that windows and doors of the Capitol building were smashed, and five people were killed.
It was so powerful that no police force was able to push back against the angry and inflamed protesters ramming their way through barricades and police phalanx into the august halls of the Capitol.
The violent incident displayed the utter ferocity with which the American people defend the integrity of their electoral system and the extent to which they would resort to violence when their votes are stolen.
It reveals how electoral fraud, when committed against an incumbent president who denounces it with a fervor and consistency never before witnessed, can lead to violence.
It could be a prelude to a broader and deep political unrest over the issue of presidential legitimacy possibly leading to the eventual demise of American democracy in a conflict similar to the American civil war over the issue of slavery.
But in a much broader sense, Mayor Guiliani’s words remind countries around the world - including notably our country that has become notorious for manual and electronic electoral frauds - that violence inevitably occurs when people’s sacred votes are stolen and democracy is mocked.
The American Capitol incident is terrifying in its aftermath: it could plunge the world back into an age of election by combat if democracy dies under the crushing weight of a persistent electoral fraud that is allowed to fester.
