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Fortuitous finale

B. S. Raghavan

AT LONG last, after 36 days of suspenseful see-sawing of fortunes of both candidates for the US presidency, it is curtains down.

Mr George W. Bush, Jr. has emerged the victor, on the say-so of the Supreme Court before which the proceedings lasted upto the proverbial eleventh hour. That a candidate should win the presidency, not on the strength of popular vote, but by virtue of jud icial diktat, has left a bitter taste in the mouth of constitutional experts and the people at large.

There were, in fact, two verdicts: One, by a majority of 7-2, that the Florida counting process was illegal, and the other, by a majority of 5-4, that the stipulated time limit (December 12 midnight) for election of Electors for the Electoral College in the Constitution barred handing down any effective judicial remedy for Mr Al Gore. It did not escape the attention of the Supreme Court-watchers that the bind was of the Court's making in that it needlessly stopped on December 9, the recount going on in Florida, denying the vital period of three days within which the counting might have been completed, leading to some clarity. As it was, at the time the Supreme Court put the embargo, Mr Bush was leading only by a little more than 100 votes.

Much the more disturbing feature was the way the Supreme Court split over the issues of stopping the counting and clamping the time-bar. All the five conservative, Republican Administration nominated Justices were on one side, while the rest of the four Justices, known to be liberal and left-of-centre, on the other. The handling of the entire case by the Supreme Court has led one of the dissenting Justices to lament that the real loser in the election was ``the nation's confidence in the judge as an imp artial guardian of the rule of law.''

However that be, a dark shadow has fallen on the legitimacy of Mr Bush's victory not only because of the string of dubious legal wrangles culminating in a more dubious climax in the Supreme Court, but also because the winner was 300,000 votes behind the loser in popular vote, but still won because of the quirks of the US Electoral College system. Mr Bush's job is not made any easier by the fact that the US is split half-and-half in the votes cast for both the candidates, as well as in the composition of the Senate and the House of Representatives.

Fortunately, both Mr Gore and Mr Bush have been impressively gracious as also sincere in their pledge to strive for a bipartisan approach to policies, with the good of the nation, and not that of their respective parties, as the sole touchstone. Watching them deliver their speeches -- one conceding defeat and asking the American people to rally behind the new President and give him their utmost support and cooperation, and the other declaring that he was elected President, not to serve one party, but to serve one nation and earn its respect -- one could not but admire the American democracy for its inherent decency and nobility.

Mr Bush, as Governor of Texas, has been a good conciliator and consensus-builder, and these qualities can be expected to stand him in good stead as the President also. He will be the cynosure of the world's eyes in the months to come.