THIS has to be one of the worst elections the United States (US) has ever held.
While we are still reeling from the fact that Donald Trump won, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has indicated that it has concluded that Russia influenced the election in favour of the president-elect.
The US’s image as the world’s greatest democracy cannot take any more hits.
According to the Washington Post, the CIA concluded in a secret assessment presented to senators last week that Russia aimed specifically to help Trump win the presidency.
The paper reported that Russia’s aim was to help Trump win and not just undermine the US electoral process.
In the months leading up to the election, email accounts of Democratic Party officials and a top Hillary Clinton campaign aide were breached, emails leaked and embarrassing and private emails posted online.
Many Democrats believe the hackings benefitted the Republican’s bid.
This year has been fraught of reports of cyber breaches including the hacking of phones and emails of some heads of state, with the US, China and Russia pointing fingers at each other.
However, going back to the 2008 presidential campaign, the campaigns of Senator John McCain and Barack Obama were breached by hackers.
This again took place in 2012, when President Obama and Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney were targets of Chinese cyber attacks.
This week, Republican Congressional leaders said key committees will investigate CIA allegations that Russia deployed hackers to disrupt the American presidential election to help Trump and hurt Clinton.
The Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee are expected to conduct bipartisan reviews.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also released a statement indicating that it ‘plans to systematically look at this issue and will begin with both a classified briefing and an open hearing in early January when the Senate returns’.
However, the House of Representatives seems less eager to tackle the issue.
House Intelligence Committee said it will continue to look into cyber threats posed by foreign governments.
The committee speaker, Paul Rayn, did not announce any new investigations and cautioned that recent reports from the CIA should not be used to ‘cast doubt’ on the legitimacy of Trump’s ‘clear and decisive’ victory.
Democrats in the House are not in agreement with their Republican counterparts, indicating that there should be a joint investigation by the House and Senate intelligence panels.
In all this, President-elect Trump has set to pour water on the allegations by the CIA.
Taking to twitter, Trump mocked the CIA, saying unless the agency had caught the hackers in action, it did not have the capacity to catch them after the act.
Trump’s campaign team has also not taken the allegations seriously and attacked the CIA claiming it once ‘lied’ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, inferring that the CIA has a ‘habit’ of getting its facts wrong.
Whether true or false, the allegations of election manipulation in the US are nothing more than the chickens coming home to roost.
The US has been interfering in the electoral processes of the developing world for years.
By creating and sponsoring opposition parties, grooming possible leaders, capacitating militants, hiring civil society and sometimes sponsoring outright wars, the US has manipulated the will of indigenous people across the globe, all in the hope of accessing cheap raw materials and markets for its corporations’ goods.
So how will these allegations affect the American society?
With the exception of the political posturing by senior Republicans and Democrats, the average American is over the election.
It’s business as usual. While the mainstream media, which was left with egg on its face after Trump’s win, will make noise for the time being, there is nothing that will come out of it.
We are likely to have a similar situation as that when Al Gore ‘lost’ the election to George Bush.
There will be pockets of outrage, but Americans will go on and possibly give Trump a second term.