Consequences Are Possible For Coups
In the year leading up to his bid for re-election, the president sought to sow doubt about the legitimacy of the voting machines and voting system throughout his country. Following his defeat, he planned a coup and his supporters attacked and ransacked the country’s national legislature. Now he is going to prison.
That president is former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. He is headed for 27 years and three months behind bars and a 35-year ban on running for office, three years after his coup attempt.
On the opposite side of the world, a president ordered military drones to overfly their neighbouring country in order to provoke a reaction with the intention of providing an excuse to declare martial law.
Martial law is permitted under the country's constitution in narrow circumstances. The provisions for it include giving the National Assembly the right to overturn the enactment of martial law in a vote.
When the president did invoke it, the order included shutting down and blocking the access of Parliamentarians to the National Assembly, specifically in order to prevent that vote from taking place, and deployed the police to block access to the building.
Parliamentarians scaled fences, got into altercations with security, and were defended by thousands of members of the public who forced access to the building, and with support even from members of the President's own party, unanimously voted to end martial law.
Less than a year later, former South Korean president Yoon Suk-Yeol is behind bars awaiting trial for several charges relating to insurrection and faces the very real possibility of life in prison. Execution is on the table.
Five years ago, in another country, a president facing likely defeat spent months sowing the seeds of doubt about the legitimacy of the election he anticipated losing. Once he did lose, as he expected but never acknowledged, he tried to cheat his way around the results to hold onto power. He filed lawsuits, pressured elections officials to discredit and change the results, accused the media of lying, and ultimately rallied thousands of his supporters to attack congress to stop his defeat from being confirmed through the country’s prescriptive constitutional process.
It was an attempted coup in which people died, and in which democracy itself was attacked at its core. It was ultimately stopped only by a vice president who had an 11th hour pang of conscience after years of supporting and working alongside the visibly corrupt president. That single act resulted in the vice president’s excommunication from the movement he would have led, and threats against his life.
But in this third country, one which takes pride in its adherence to the rule of law, of having a solid constitutional base upon which all people are to be treated equally, of ensuring free speech, free association, and free elections, the outcome was very different indeed.
The president that defeated him did not want to make waves or appear vindictive, and made no sincere effort to hold the corrupt, coup-leading former president to account. The special counsel appointed to investigate and prosecute the coup leader waited too long to pursue charges that themselves were insufficient. The Senate refused to convict on the congressional impeachment. Then the Supreme Court ruled that the president had acted within his role as president and was therefore enjoyed near total immunity.
While out of office, without occupying the White House, then-former president Trump took control of all three branches of government, ran for an election in which he should never have been permitted to be a candidate, and claimed absolute power for himself, free of any consequence or accountability.
In Brazil, the judicial branch of government never lost sight of the importance of the rule of law. They pursued the former president for plotting a coup against their country and will deal with him as any criminal should be dealt with.
In South Korea, the legislative branch of government rose to the challenge and members of the president’s own party fought to stop the president’s illegal actions in their tracks within hours, impeached the president, and put him, too, on the road to justice.
In the United States, the legislative branch that had been physically attacked forgave the president’s coup attempt, the executive branch against whom the coup was directed demurred from acting within their power to seek justice, and then the judicial branch ended all hope by declaring his actions legal.
Now Donald Trump is back in power, crashing the economy, attacking his opponents, setting up concentration camps, allowing widespread corruption in plain sight, and actively seeking an adversary for a war to further distract his people. And for those who still believe this is temporary, he is openly preparing to steal the next election. All of it is an inevitable consequence of the failure of every major democratic institution in the United States to rise to the occasion.
When the United States speak of being leaders of the free world, the only freedom which they now lead is the freedom from consequence for anyone with the chutzpah to ignore the rule of law, trample on democracy, and graft their way to personal fortune so long as they have dehumanisable minorities on whom to pin the blame.
It did not have to be that way. Brazil and South Korea clearly learned the lessons of the 20th century like the Beer Hall Putsch. But the United States are so convinced of their own collective greatness that they will let their worst get away with anything.
And once you get away with a coup, there are no more rules that matter.