{"id":240,"date":"2017-01-25T19:35:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T00:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/?p=240"},"modified":"2017-01-25T19:35:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T00:35:00","slug":"the-story-has-just-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/?p=240","title":{"rendered":"THE STORY HAS JUST BEGUN"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Fritz Saint-Macary.<\/em> Picture : Donald Trump wrapped in the American flag.<\/p>\n

In a few hours, on Friday 20 January 2017, exactly at one minute past noon, Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. Half of the electorate plus 3 millions voted for his electoral rival Hillary Clinton, and the rest voted for Trump, who got elected only by the Electoral College. Thus, while the majority (pro-Hillary) of this country is anxious, the other half minus 3 million (pro-Trump) is very hopeful.<\/p>\n

This Friday morning I heard someone on the radio say : \u201cShow me, don\u2019t tell me!\u201d Reinforcing that skeptical attitude let me add that I want to SEE actions, rather than HEAR words. And finally, as I have stated in a previous Facebook post (see below,) the most appropriate posture now is to wait and see before judging.<\/p>\n

The usual length of the honeymoon period \u2014 i.e., a period of voluntary no criticism \u2014 allowed by the press to new heads of state is 100 days. Well, I choose to be more lenient than those \u201cwriters of history\u2019s first draft\u201d and endure a bit longer wait than three months before I pass judgment on Trump\u2019s performance; aiming to judge on the basis of well-established facts, more precisely of concrete results of his administration. Following such a rule of thumb will permit me to decide somewhat objectively what kind of chief executive the U.S. (and the world!) has gotten.<\/p>\n

To conclude, I was struck by what then President Barack Obama told then President-elect Donald Trump: \u201cif you succeed, the country succeeds.\u201d It is, indeed, a remarkably succinct and wellthought-out statement, not surprising since Obama is a remarkable man.<\/p>\n

THREE DAYS LATER: <\/strong>After the swear-in ceremony and the inauguration festivities of last Friday 1\/20\/2017, Donald J. Trump is henceforth the fullfledged, politically legitimate president of the United States. This is a controversial opinion, by the way.<\/p>\n

In any case, it can be said that a new countdown has started: for the next 100 days which is the length of the honeymoon period or \u201cperiod of grace,\u201d it may be fair to refrain from criticizing the new Chief executive. However, once that time period is over, I expect the press to begin a normal adversarial relationship with Trump. Indeed, the journalists\u2019 constitutional duty will be to factcheck every statement made by the new administration, and also start judging President Trump\u2019s concrete results, especially in light of his numerous campaign promises.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an objective opinion, and I dare say it\u2019s a provable not an \u2018\u2019alternative\u2019\u2019 fact.\u2014<\/p>\n

Found the original of this in P. 1, 3,<\/strong> PDF version of Ha\u00efti Observateur VOL. <\/strong>XXXXVII, No. 4 New York <\/em><\/strong>: <\/em>at https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/HO25Janvier2017-1.pdf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Fritz Saint-Macary. Picture : Donald Trump wrapped in the American flag. In a few hours, on Friday 20 January 2017, exactly at one minute past noon, Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States. Half… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,35,40,53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anglais","category-monde","category-politique","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/haiti-observateur.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}