The Rise of Social Liberalism

The world has witnessed general elections in two major countries New Zealand and USA, recently. both the elections were fought on some common issues in center, namely- performance of current government in handling COVID-19 pandemic coupled with socio-economic factors racism, immigration and economic growth. the result of both the elections signifies the larger picture of post COVID-19 era. The landslide victory of New Zealand Prime minister Jacinda Ardern of Labor party by record votes have many implications. Her previous tenure saw the terror attack in Christchurch mosque during Friday prayer in which 51 Muslim worshippers were killed by white supremacists. her strong antiracism stance after the attack and her message of empathy and kindness with victims won many hearts around the world.
Under her tenure, New Zealand was one of the first countries to apply strict measures to contain the pandemic. as early as February when its borders were closed and quarantine measures were put in place. her policies to contain the virus has been lauded around the world as massive success. Due to her policies, New Zealand has eliminated the virus twice from the country- in June, followed by September.
while the election issues of both the countries were primarily similar, the results were contrasting. the US Presidential election result was seen more as the loss of Trump than victory of Biden. the dissatisfaction and backlash against Trump’s policies has larger role than affinity towards Biden.
Political and social divide is at peak in US. the ruthless murder of George Floyd for his identity shook the whole world, followed by ‘Black lives matter’ movement globally. this incident can be drawn parallel to Christchurch shooting of New Zealand but both the cases were handled polarly by their supreme leaders. Trump embraced the white supremacists and supported them openly and incited the mobs, which lead to riots and killing of many others afterwards. his pseudo nationalism has rooted a deep racial divide in American society.
Trump has also lead the country poorly on the pandemic front. his COVID-19 handling policies were widely criticized. the poorly managed lockdown and underestimation pandemic has exposed the limits of his capitalistic approach. US has topped in the list of people infected from COVID-19 19. more than 20000 people died and case count stood at more than 9.2 million. he even opposed wearing of masks only to get contracted later, endangering not only his life, his family, staff and security detail, but the stability of the federal nation.
Trump established himself as the ‘Global liar’. he lied every here and there with support from fake facts and figure. he never cared of the prestige of the leader of state. pulling out of Paris climate agreement and Iran nuclear deal damaged his image globally. reeling economy, unemployment and immigrant policies added numbers to his failures.
The success of Ardern and failure of Trump ha shown that hyper nationalism is unjust and irrational for a democratic society. the time has come to explore more social institutions and economic systems and strengthening the socio-liberal model of democracy.
By Faisal khan