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While the Sri Lanka Government struggled to hide its tainted face as Udayanga W was busy plastering his ruptured bubble, an exhausted people were looking for ways to escape from a possible wave of Ukranians bearing virus.

As is a common political pastime, some promoters were quick to blame the closest who had unfortunately come to touch the Ukrainian enterprise even with a barge pole.

So those who were involved because of their official positions — state officials or otherwise vulnerable — became victims of the blame-game along with critics who exposed shortcomings and failures. Some quickly turned this “pilot project” into a joke saying that it should more appropriately be called a pilotless project seeing how many hands appeared to be on the rudder.

As the battle over the Ukraine virus had moved from the sandy plains of Yala to the hilly terrain of Kandy with the Sri Lankan forces retreating to the cover of the region’s natural defences of vanadurga (before the forests are slaughtered by nationalist defence lines), janadurga and giridurga.

Here they thought to erect what would be an impenetrable Maginot Line to quickly direct criticism away from the so-called experts in the war room planning another paratroop drop behind enemy lines while another few plane-loads of reserves were either kicking its heels in Kiev or trying to avoid a shortened quarantine after landing at Mattala.

But as a fierce battle broke out on a western front a couple of days after the battle for Mattala and attention shifted to the Washington theatre, media focus shifted swiftly to the world’s capital where the commander of the White House forces was engaged in stirring up the white supremacists and other racist rabble.

Many thought that attention was deliberately diverted from the tussle over tourism to the Presidential washup in Washington not just to make the people lose interest in the Ukrainian virus but to allow our political rabble-rousers and Alt-Right stone-throwers to pick up some new tactics to tame a citizenry whose early support at the ballot box has quickly turned to anger and antagonism.

One is hardly likely to see some of our rabble- rousers dressed in the garb of 24-carat nationalists doing some of what President (for a few days more) Trump does best — waking up at dawn to send some nasty tweets, the twit that he is.

But as someone once said we should not be mistaken. We have our own twits who can teach a thing or two to more than emulate the buffoonery emanating from the White House and, in a couple of week’s time, from the Trump Tower from where he would be trumpeting all the nastiness.

The one thing our nasties will not be able to do is what Trump does — twittering at dawn as the birds do. That is because our unshakeable patriots are up till midnight at least when the hands of the clock snip the night in half and state coffers take a dip day by day or should one say night by night.

But one can wait to regale the world’s hospitality industry looking to pick up tips (no, not the waiters) from the purveyors of pilot projects until Donald J. Trump is thrown out of the Oval Office and the White House Rose Garden in a few days’ time, if not before.

In anticipation of his departure after being kicked out by the people who sent him to the White House in the first place, Trump using his executive powers pardoned several convicted persons, including his father-in-law a week or two ago.

Not that we need lessons in this regard except that some leaders do not wait until the end of their term but do so when they come to office, which shows that all leaders are not as dumb as Trump who thinks he is as clever as Kim Jong-un.

Until doomsday dawned last Wednesday, Trump would hail the US as the world’s “greatest democracy” — as accurate as any Trump statement. It is not that democracy failed, it almost collapsed under the weight of racist bigotry trumpeted for years by the chief trumpeteer .

In this instance mob rule threatened to bring it down but American institutions bent but did not break thanks to their long-established traditions. Still Trump shamelessly thanked the mobs and those Republicans who supported the attempted siege of the Congress, ultimately capitulated to the verdict of the people which he challenged on several occasions but found futile to uproot

Trump’s unashamed conduct and that of his lawyers did not succeed thanks to a judiciary that would not bend to the threats of the executive and the attempts to throttle the law. Trump’s lawsuits were so absurd even to be dignified as frivolous.

The authoritarianism that Trump brought to the White House, the arbitrariness that led to civil service officials who were kicked out because they would not agree with his wayward decision-making and standing firmly in support of international treaties and agreements made even US allies turn against Washington.

Trump’s greatest international moment, as somebody once said cynically, was separating children from their families at the US border. It has also been said how corrupt he has been in his dealings and those of some of his family.

It is scant wonder that he would call the media the enemy of the people. Pity his remarks were not more calibrated towards the truth. Had he said it was the enemy of some people or that some media were the enemy of the people it would have been far closer to the truth.

But then to expect politicians to be uttering the truth as though born with the truth spouting continuously from their mouths would be to have a Trevi Fountain built in.

The disgraceful conduct of Donald Trump is representative of politicians playing to the crowd for ephemeral political advantage by rousing mob violence against racial, religious and coloured people.

The rise and fall this presidential thug who kicks senior officials and internationally recognised diplomats and experts and packs his administration with family and loonies should stand as an example to leaders around the world.

The lesson is that the corrupt, crooked and fraudsters will be ousted however unshakable they believe they are.

(Neville de Silva is a veteran Sri Lankan journalist who was Assistant Editor, Diplomatic Editor and Political Columnist of the Hong Kong Standard before moving to London where he worked for Gemini News Service. Later he was Deputy Chief-of-Mission in Bangkok and Deputy High Commissioner in London before returning to journalism.)