By Rajan Philips –

Rajan Philips

The question obviously shows its Sri Lankan bias. For there is no country in the world that has been so much preoccupied, for so long, on so constitutional a matter – as the pros and cons of a parliamentary system as opposed to a presidential system. And only in Sri Lanka will such a question – whether Trump could be a king in a parliamentary system – will make sense or find some resonance, any resonance. Insofar as the current NPP government is committed to reverting back to its old parliamentary system from the current presidential system, the government could use all of Trump’s presidential antics as one of the justifications for the long awaited constitutional change.

It is not that every presidential system is inherently prone to being turned into an upstart monarchy. The historical irony is that America’s founding fathers decided on a presidential system at a time when there was no constitutional model or prototype available in the world. In fact, the American system became the world’s first constitutional prototype. The founding fathers had all the experiential reason to be wary of the parliamentary system in England because it was associated with then King George III who was reviled in the colonies. Yet the founding fathers were alert to the risks involved. James Maddison reminded that “If men were angels, no government would be necessary;” and John Adams warned that man’s “Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net.”

For over 200 years, no American president tried to break the country’s political constitutional system for reasons of avarice, anger and revenge, as Trump is doing now. Presidents in other countries with far less traditions of checks and balances have been accounted for both politically and legally for their excesses and trespasses. In Brazil, the system was turned against both the current President Lula and his previous successor Dilma Rousseff. In between them, Jair Bolsonaro imitated Trump in Brazil and even tried to launch a coup after his re-election defeat in 2022, emulating Trump’s insurrection in Washington, in January 2021. But in Brazil, Bolsonaro has been accused of and is being charged for his crime, while in America its Supreme Court has let Trump walk away with immunity and to be back as president with impunity.

In Philippines, the current government of President Ferdinand Marcos has turned over its former President Rodrigo Duterte to stand trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Duterte is being charged with crimes against humanity for allegedly ordering the killing of as many as 30,000 people as part of the campaign against drug users and dealers. In Sri Lanka, Mahinda Rajapaksa tried to be king, unsuccessfully sought a third term, and set up the system for family succession. But the people have spurned the Rajapaksas and questions as to whether they have been given undue protection from prosecution keep swirling. To wit, the contentious Al Jazeera interview of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Teflon Trump

In the US, Trump is nonstick and remains untouched. Unlike the prime minister in a parliamentary system, an American president has no presence in the legislature except for the ceremonial State of the Union address. And unlike no other president before him, Trump has created a daily theatre of governance. He holds daily press conferences, rather chats, before an increasingly hand picked group of journalists, where he turns lies into ex cathedra pronouncements, and signs executive orders like a king issuing edicts. No one questions him instantly and his base hears what he wants them to hear. By the time professional fact checkers, the new breed that is spawned and swelled by Trump himself, mark up their red lines, Trump and his followers have moved on to another topic. This has become the daily parody of the Trump second term.

No prime minister in any parliament can get away with such nonsense. Every contentious statement will be instantly challenged and lies, or terminological inexactitudes in parliamentary parlance, will be promptly refuted and corrected. Parliamentary question periods are the pulse of the political order especially in times of crisis. After being in the House of Commons gallery during a visit to England, President Richard Nixon was astonished at the barrage of questions that then Prime Minister Harold Wilson had to face and provide answers to. These are minor differences that are hardly noticed in normal times. But the Trump presidency is magnifying even the minor shortcomings of a major political system.

Trump’s cabinet is another instance where the American system is falling apart. The President’s cabinet in America is based on unelected officials approved by the Senate. Until now cabinet secretaries or ministers have generally been well equipped academics or professionals and were selected by successive presidents based on their known political leanings. Their ties to corporate America were well known but that was usually qualified by the clear motivation to excel in providing exceptional service to the country.

In contrast, Trump’s second term cabinet comprises a cabal of self-serving ‘yes’ men with no stellar background in the academia or professions in the materially productive departments of the economy. The experts Trump has picked are all experts in the financial sector – what Marx called the ‘fictitious economy.’ Outside the cabinet circle are the tech billionaires waiting for their tax cuts.

They are all there to do Trump’s bidding and to disrupt the orderly functioning of government. Their ineffectiveness is now daily manifested in the drama over Trump’s decisions on tariffs which vary by the time of day and his mood of the moment. The reciprocal countries do not know what to expect, but they have learnt that any agreement that they may reach with Trump’s ministers means nothing and that nothing will be certain until Trump makes his next announcement.

Americans, and others, will have to go through this for the next four years, but in a parliamentary system there could be quicker remedies. A prime minister cannot erratically hold on to power for a full term, and as British parliamentary experience has recurrently shown prime ministers are brought down by cabinet ministers when they have outlived their usefulness to the government and the country.

There is no such recourse available in the US. The device of impeachment is simply inoperable in a divided legislature and Trump has demonstrated this twice in one term. Trump has also effectively emaciated the legislative branch in spite of the constitutional separation of powers and the hallowed traditions that have evolved over two centuries. In a parliamentary system, the legislature is supreme, surpassing the monarchy but subject to periodical elections and judicial checks.      

Growing Pushback

Yet after the initial weeks of shock and awe, pushback to Trump is now growing and is slowly becoming significant. Within America the resistance is mostly in the courts, especially the lower federal courts, where the judges are ordering against the stoppage of USAID contract payments, the manifestly illegal firing of government employees, indiscriminate accessing of government data by Musk and his DOGE boys, and the barring by executive order of a law firm that had once represented Hillary Clinton from doing business with the federal government.

Also, in the highly watched case against the deportation order served on the Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian with Green Card status and married to a fellow Palestinian who is a US citizen, the courts have ordered the government to stop the deportation process until the case is resolved. Mr. Khalil was a prominent leader of the student protests at Columbia against the Israeli devastation of Gaza, and the District Judge ordering the temporary ban on deportation is Jesse Furman, an exceptionally qualified American Jew who was appointed by President Obama and was once touted as a potential Supreme Court judge.            

Political commentaries in the West are preoccupied with speculations over how, when and where all of Trump’s orders and initiatives will impact people’s lives and their politics. One comforting constant is the presidential term limit that will stop Trump’s presidency in January 2029, although Trump will never stop musing about a third term in office. Just as he mouths off about annexing Canada, purchasing Greenland and expropriating Gaza. Mercifully, he has not made any claim to immortality.

The elusive variable is the response of the people. So far, Trump has been able to maintain his hold over his base and he is pulling a tight leash on the Republicans in Congress to toe the line given their narrow margins in both the House and the Senate. The base is indicating support to all his madman initiatives even though Trump has fallen back to his usual negative approval rating (more people disapprove than approve of him) in popular opinion polls. What is not clear is when the public will turn on the president if he actually imposes tariffs on consumer goods, keeps firing government employees, and keeps eroding social welfare.

Trump won the election promising to bring down the prices and cost of living instantly, but everything he is doing now is driving up the costs and people will eventually start registering their dissatisfactions. Unlike in Britain there is no tradition to cheer the monarch and damn the government. Sooner or later, Americans will have nothing to cheer their king for, but everything to damn him, because this ersatz king is also their government.   

There are scattered protests in many parts of America, with people showing up at local town hall meetings organized by Republican congressmen. The protest against the deportation of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil is likely to gather traction and is already drawing a spectrum of supporters including progressive Jewish and other American citizens. A Jewish organization called Jewish Voice for Peace has organized a sit in protest in support of Khalil in the lobby of Trump Tower in New York. Other high rise buildings may be targeted.

More resoundingly, Senator Bernie Sanders has launched a national tour for “Fighting Oligarchy” and drew a crowd of ten thousand people at his first stop in Michigan. The tour is a teaser to the Democratic Party leadership that is currently stuck in its tracks like a hare caught in Trump’s headlights. The Party is going by the calendar and waiting for its turn at the next mid-term elections in 2026, and the full election year in 2028 to elect the next president. The old campaign heavyweight James Carville has publicly advised the party to “play dead” until Trump’s systemic chaos turns the people against the Administration. Not everyone is prepared to be so patient.

New York Congress woman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) is not prepared to “completely roll over and give up on protecting the Constitution.” She wants instant and consistent opposition to Trump and not to play the waiting game according to the electoral calendar. Trump for one does not wait for anything and breaks every rule to advance his indeterminate agenda. Among Democrats, AOC has the most extensive social media base, and many Democrats are encouraging her to take the next step and announce her candidacy for New York’s Senate seat. She is a shrewd politician with growing support and is well positioned to open another front against Trump, paralleling the national tour that Bernie Sanders has launched.