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its many ills but even democracy with all its imperfections foresaw that at times the will of the people can be overridden to confer emergency powers to a leader in a crisis otherwise the state can be paralyzed by debate. So let us check out how the world has handled the crisis given that the world knew about the virus that devastated Wuhan as early as November last year and it is common knowledge that the world had intelligence reports on the outbreak in good time. What is undeniable at the moment is that the world is in a grip of a struggle trying to bring what the WHO has already declared a pandemic in control. People are not only losing their livelihood and jobs but people are dying and they are afraid. This is the time that decisive leadership is needed to quell the fear and give hope and inspiration in a world that has become suddenly hostile. There is plenty of fear, anxiety and uncertainty and people are looking to their leaders for direction. This is an election year in the USA and the most important issue at the polls will be the performance of the economy and the electorate will punish or reward dependent on how they believe their next leader will handle the economy. We have seen what appears to be indecisive leadership from Trump that has allowed the virus spread to become a crisis without giving direction. This is a leader who actually understands his electorate and is playing to what they understand. It has not yet dawned on most Americans exactly how much in peril they are from this pandemic and in the typical American ‘we can beat anything’ attitude they are not even sensible enough to start panicking as there is always an American fix to everything. Trump in his rhetoric is telling the Americans that this virus is not a big deal and that’s exactly what they want to hear and to psychologically drive the message home he had even called it the Chinese virus mentally distancing it from the American psyche. Trump even took the time to exchange barbs with the Chinese who had suggested that the virus was an American creation and taken to China by the military which rubbed Trump the wrong way and he went into his best xenophobic retaliation placing the blame squarely in the Chinese sphere. His sycophants have picked the chorus and shown disdain to the flu by christening it ‘Kung-flu’ while others have stated that it is a Chinese fueled hoax and incredulously some have even said that this is just another attempt to impeach the president and it will fail. And as unbelievable as it might be it is working as the approval rating of the president are rising and many approve of his handling of the pandemic even while the onlookers feel that Trump is playing roulette with American lives. Trump is obviously taking a huge gamble on American lives that the pandemic is controlled within his timelines because he has no choice really. If the economy tanks he is cooked and if a miracle happens in between then he wins big. Just sorry for those infected under his watch. In a seriously polarized political environment all decisions are made on party lines and it is already apparent how dysfunctional the model democracy can be which reminds us of our own ‘siasa mbaya maisha mbaya’ refrain of the Moi era.