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The breach of democracy – January 6th, 2021

On January 6^th, 2021 a history was created in the world’s powerful democracy. We saw what happens when people lay their faith in a person and not in the system. The most disheartening part of it was that even Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, also a well-known model supported the moment that literally just destroyed the faith people around the globe had on U.S.A democracy.

Also Read: Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Sri Raj Narain & Anr.

The proverb ‘one wrong apple spoils the barrel’ fits perfectly in this situation. The power of America commenting on every other democracy got worthless in one day.

What led to the breach of democracy?

On December 20 Trump said that statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election. Big protest in DC on January 6^th be there and be wild![1]

After the capital incident, he said, I know you are hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. [2]

Also Check Out: Elections- Let’s Go Back to Basics

The incident in Washington happened, was according to the report was a response to 1,448 days of Twitter storms, provocation, race-baiting, busted norms, shock-jock governance, and truth-bending from the oval office that left the country more polarized than in generations.[3] Many U.S based psychiatrists nearly 350 and other medical professionals entreated Congress that the president’s mental health is deteriorating. They a year ago concluded that there possibility and real potential that Trump could be even more dangerous, a threat to the safety of the democracy and that fear came true.

The elect- president Joe Biden called it ‘a dark moment’ in the halls of congress. Those who warned of worst-case scenarios only to be dismissed as alarmists found some of their darkest fears realized. By day’s end, even some Republicans suggested removing Trump under the 25th Amendment rather than wait two weeks for the inauguration of President-elect.

The 25^th Amendment

The Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution deals with presidential succession and disability. It clarifies that the vice president becomes president if the president dies, resigns, or is removed from office, and establishes how a vacancy in the office of the vice president can be filled.

Also Read: Contract of agency: Features and Distinctiveness

According to Encyclopedia Britannica, while the first section codified the traditionally observed process of succession in the event of the death of the president that the vice president would succeed to the office it also introduced a change regarding the ascent of the vice president to president should the latter resign from office. [4]

The second section of the amendment addresses vacancies in the office of the vice president of the democracy USA.

The third section of the amendment set forth the formal process for determining the capacity of the president to discharge the powers and duties of the office.

It is this fourth section of the 25th Amendment that many are asking Vice President Pence to invoke against President Trump.

The past channel:

On July 2, 1915, a former German professor at Harvard, Erich Muenter, planted a package containing three sticks of dynamite in the Capitol near the Senate Reception room. The explosive detonated around midnight and during a time when the Senate had been on recess. An on-duty Capitol Police officer was nearly knocked out of his chair during the blast, but fortunately, no one was injured. The German-born man later wrote a letter to a Washington, D.C. newspaper saying he had planted the explosives to protest U.S. wartime aid to Britain and said he hoped the detonation would “make enough noise to be heard above the voices that clamor for war[5].
On March 1, 1954, four Puerto Rican Americans fired guns in the House of Representatives.[6]
On March 1, 1971, a bomb exploded in the Capitol building urging five congressmen.
13 years later, on November 7, 1983, a bomb tore through the second floor of the Senate wing of the Capitol. The device detonated late in the evening and no one was harmed.[7]
On January 6, 2021, on a day when representatives met to formalize the presidential election results, hundreds of rioters supporting President Donald Trump and seeking to overthrow President-Elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory pushed through police barricades and stormed the Capitol, some smashing windows to enter its halls. One woman was fatally struck by police gunfire inside the Capitol during the mayhem and a Capitol Police officer died a day later from injuries he sustained while confronting the rioters. Three other people died in the Capitol area after experiencing medical emergencies during the riot.[8]

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The growing age of social media in democracy

We see many people tweeting or commenting or posting hatred. Although there social media regulation and rules where you can report the wrong content immediately but does it work immediately remains the question here.

After the violence in capital Trump’s social media account was dismissed but that didn’t erase what happened before. The social media out-ragging is the world-wild problem having no solution. Even after dismissing his account, he was not stopped from tweeting he tweeted from another account named POTUS accusing Twitter of suspending free-speech and silencing him and his supporters. All the tweets were then deleted.

There is an urgent need of implementing stringent laws on social media. And as the reality is “roses also have thorns”, so now it’s time to put aside rose and pick up those thorns biting the nation, and the world.

-Shreya Patel

(Member, The Legal State)