The 117th session of Congress begins its work today
A shaky Democratic majority of five seats has been formed in the lower house. The fight for the Senate will be decided after the run-off elections in Georgia on 5 January.
Three days later, Congress will vote to certify the electoral votes for the presidential (House) and vice-presidential (Senate) candidates.
On that day, a mass gathering of Republican activists and Trump supporters is planned in Washington. It could be the biggest conservative rally since the Tea Party rallies in the early years of the Obama presidency.
Many hotels, restaurants and street establishments in the US capital are closing for the next few days, trying to hastily barricade themselves in anticipation of street unrest
At least a dozen Republican senators have announced that they will try to block the certification of electoral votes for Biden. They are led by Ted Cruz – he is calling for an independent commission to investigate election fraud.
There have already been such precedents in American history – for example, in 1877 a commission was set up to investigate election irregularities in Florida, South Carolina and Louisiana.
Mike Pence has already backed the senators’ speech. As vice-president, it is he who will preside over the congressional vote-certification procedure on the sixth of January.
The Republican senators are ready to be joined by more than a hundred congressmen from the lower house. They are in the minority and are unlikely to be able to influence the outcome of the certification. But their main concern is to get all cases of fraud in the scandalous election investigated.
The unbalanced US political system is now in dire need of delegitimising electoral processes. Without this, it could very quickly crumble.
Malek Dudakov