A hard day's week

The late Harold Wilson famously observed that “a week is a long time in politics.”. We have just had a week where a day was a long time in politics.

At home we achieved an African first a bloodless and relatively constitutional “coup-de-etat”. A man who has hogged the headlines for the past few years has, in a fell swoop been nudged towards the margins in the slightest of slights. In protocol terms it was a stunning strategic move. In addition the left in the ruling Party [and without, in the alliance partnership], seem for the moment to have outflanked the radical cadres that poured rage in the name of Jacob Zuma.

Simultaneously the conciliatory position of the victorious faction has moderated any serious schism that underlies the inherent tensions between the desire to serve oneself and the need to serve others; with those who seek office to achieve enrichment perhaps having to lie low for a while...

A signal for those was the summary, contact termination, of the police chief in a local metro region. The man had apparently developed an unsavoury penchant for becoming embroiled in controversial events, often involving alcohol. He was always controversial but under the regime of former, now disgraced, president Thabo Mbeki he led a charmed life and proved that you are what you practice apparently, since his political masters have told him to go.

Now of course its time to produce something other than rabbits from a hat and the Party needs to see some serious performance on key issues before the election is upon them and they fail to achieve the 80% majority they so richly desire. [The number of registered voters in the country has remained relatively static since ’94. The proportion of registered voters to potential voters seems to be on the decline, and the percentage that actually vote is similarly declining. What this means is unexplored.]

As big and momentous an event as this was, it barely merited a total of five minutes across all global news channels routinely monitored be this bloggist. The political opposition and the press are fuelling the idea of a split in the Party and it may yet come to pass… but frankly, the moment seems to have passed. The left have captured the Brand ANC, and all other political parties are doomed to live on the margins for a while longer. +Anyone breaking away from the ANC to form a new party at this time is walking into political and probable economic extinction.

From the world’s p.o.v. a bigger event has hogged the headlines: the great economic meltdown predicted buy this bloggist for many years has finally arrived. Until this past week I would have said that the septuagenarian republican contender for the Presidency in the USA [the one with the scary, huntin’, shootin’ n fishin’ lady running mate] was in with a chance. But he was the one saying that the past excess could be managed without a tax increase… The dark contender was pragmatic enough to recognise that a tax increase was inevitable.

And truth will out. As I write this this the 700 billion dollar rescue package proposed by the Bush Administration as a panacea for all ills is stalled in congress; and the world’s stockmarkets are collapsing. It is also more than possible that 700 billion will not be sufficient to ballast the markets against a de-leveraging meltdown. I now predict that Mr Obama will walk this election and that the USA will enter a period of economic difficulty unprecedented in decades. [He has been handed a poisoned chalice much like the way the eternally declining Zimbabwe was handed such a chalice by Mr Mbeki.]

The American taxpayer has just been landed with a trillion dollar debt to pay off. And more than likely another trillion dollar debt to come. It was sneaked up on them and they fully deserve it because they have sucked merrily off the hind tit for 8 years in one of the biggest greed splurges in history. And now they and many others will pay with their mortgages.

Happy blogging