ST. JOHN’S, Antigua - The United States always sells itself as the ultimate in the democratic process in the world. So much criticism has been levelled at African, Mid-east and European countries that have found themselves in electoral turmoil that the impression has been given that in the process of good governance, nothing could ever go wrong in the United States.
The internecine war between the two main political parties in the United States has had anasty third world-style fallout in that the federal government, with headquarters in Washington DC, has been forced to shut down, except for the most essential of workers.
It is not the first time that a federal government shutdown has occurred. It is ironical that former US president Bill Clinton, a Democrat, has had to face the ire of the Republican Party in the 1990s when the Republicans pulled the plug on him.