One-horse race in a one-horse town?

AS city, town and village prepare to go to the polls again, a sense of vague unease seems to lie like a pall over the land (in my mind's-eye at least).

- By Wijith DeChickera

It is, like the weather these days, a disconcerting non-event or not quite event. There are distant flashes on unseen horizons, almost inaudible rumblings rolling over the hinterland or out at sea, and premonitions of a deluge to come...

All of this, if the electorate had a more fine-tuned feeling for forecasting, would have us all much ill at ease than the momentary lull in matters of governance the moment seems to find us in. For while we appear to have been spared the ill-winds of arrogant and yet incompetent governors as of old, the barometer of the better fortune that was predicted has fallen (perhaps imperceptibly) in the recent past...

That predicament has come to pass by default rather than by design.

Which is to take the charitable view in assuming the bona fides of the National People's Power, when it was so powerfully promising sea-changes on the long-forgotten presidential and parliamentary campaign trails.

However much potential it still seems to hold as nation, state and country gear up for local government elections, the NPP is but a pale shadow of its former self...

Charge of a lightly let-down brigade

In brief, the broken promises (charitably: the projects in abeyance; realistically: the programmatic apathy) of the JVP-led government bear rehearsal.

A presidency yet to be directed constitutionally towards abolition (there is time still, if only there would remain political will) hovers like an unwelcome albatross overhead.

An Easter revelation meant to shock and awe was masterfully neglected while alleged masterminds not apprehended as envisaged by the powers that be or expected by a wounded pilgrim people still abscond. As the haunting lyrics of Supertramp's 'Crime of the Century' ask pointedly: "Who are these men of lust, greed and glory? Rip off the masks and let's see!"