Election Day

Subject: Election Day

So the day has arrived a day when our airwaves and our newspapers will, by force of law be silent on the matter of politics. 'No attempt shall be made to persuade the citizens as to the way they will vote'. Its as if we are in the eye of a hurricane, a stillness has descended after weeks of storms, of lightening and thunder, of rain and wind everything has gone quiet as we turn out in our millions to put a cross against the party candidate we wish to enter parliament and represent us. The business of parliament reaches into all our lives, no one is immune from the laws which are passed or the investment of your tax money on projects supposedly to enhance your living standards. 
Election night is the night when the media stutters into action with the election night programs which swing into life once the elections booths are closed and the counting of votes is started. 
The pundits are rounded up, the usual media personalities appear to debate the possible outcome based on information, not gained inside the polling station but from outside the station where what are called 'exit polls' are undertaken to try to flush out the voting trends. Statistics and statisticians. become the grist to the mill as the information filters in from across the country and slowly begins to define which seats will fall to which Party and from these projections, who will be the overall winner. The counting continues throughout the night and as we move from the small hours through to daybreak increasingly tired observers lay aside their pencils and abacus and the politicians line up in the municipal halls up and down the country to acknowledge the winner in their specific patch..  We at home, if we have bothered, stay up and watch the trends, the graphs and swing indicators which flash onto our tv screens indicating which party will lead the country for the next five years. The losing politicians appear in front of the cameras each trying to hold their dignity, the winners, over the moon.  The teams of canvassers and backroom staff who for weeks and months, if not years have focussed on this one event, this one night of winners and losers sit huddled in their gloom or euphoria.. The leader of the party makes a jubilant or crestfallen speech depending on the result, if the Prime Minister has won he gets to sleep in the same bed, if he has lost he parades his family outside No 10 having gone to see the Queen to submit his resignation and then tiptoes offstage left as the winner, the new PM joyfully thanks all and sundry before entering through the door of No 10 to start work, no doubt almost immediately dismantling  much of what had been promised and scoring out much of what had led the millions to vote for him or her in the first place.
It's a sham of course, promises broken, scattered like confetti in the wind, no one to hold him or her to account for the truth or the lie, only the same old same old obfuscation and downright deceit. 
The manifestos held aloft to attract the votes now discarded for another five years. Words written without any intent, which if we were in a court of law and the meaning was deemed contractual then heads would roll but in this phantom political universe different rules apply in fact I must amend that, 'no rules' apply and in this virtual reality world of subterfuge, we allow the mendacity to run on and on as if we, the headless chickens want nothing more than to continue running blind.

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