Who would want to move here?

It was the ugliest election campaign in the country’s living history, with the leading candidates sledging each other in a way that would make Karl Rove and Dick Cheney beam with admiration. Drunkards leaning on lampposts … sex chat line surveys … testicles … boiled babies and fertilizer – nothing was beyond the pale in a vitriolic contest that in the end centered around … nothing. There was no debate of substance, and it would be surprising if any of the electorate really knew what policies or policy differences, if any, they were voting for. The 49.8% to 49.7% result, while crowning a victor on paper, reflects perhaps more a change of underwear than a change of the guard…

Who in his right mind, after all, would want to take charge of an economy that roared along at 1.2% in 2005, and that is optimistically projected to “accelerate” to 1.4% by 2008. Wow! Hold on to your horses, cowboy! No wonder that it was left to a buffoon and a “bland sausage” to contest for the reins of the most tepid economy in a struggling region, in a country with the zone’s highest tax rates – no mean achievement – and, both delightfully and somewhat unsurprisingly, the most pervasive and routine practice of the sport of tax evasion.

Talking of sport, it’s enough to force one to turn away from politics and business and try to get a little distraction and diversion. But turning to soccer – the next biggest thing to Catholicism (if it’s even second at all to anything in everyman’s true and honest heart) – the news isn’t much better. With World Cup 2006 just days away, the country’s footballing fraternity is reeling under a series of top-level scandals and resultant resignations that have everyone crying anything but wolf. Flamboyant tales of match-fixing, “irregular betting patterns”, and the withdrawal of an already-appointed World Cup referee (because of “consultations” with club officials associated with the scandals), have investigators unsure which way to turn, not for lack of material, but rather for the gluttonous surfeit of it. It’s a veritable Machiavellian feast, right in his own back yard.

Ah, but that’s all at the top, you say. Life at eye level – or “I” level, perhaps – is more normal, surely. Well, perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. Where else would you find a water bill for 1.4 million liters for a house whose owners were over 4,000 miles away, and whose water meter was rusted so fast that it couldn’t be opened? Frustrating enough, yes, but nothing compared with the task of sorting it out. With a bureaucracy that embodies and enthusiastically embraces the very term’s caricatured reputation, repeat visits and cast-iron proof yielded … a 1% reduction in the bill. “Must be a commercial venture,” says the water authority earnestly of the rural, vacant property, secure in their fantasy and with a hand hovering over the red “disconnect” button.

Who, then, in their right mind, would even consider moving to a country as confused and misdirected as this one? Yes, who indeed…