D-DAY MUSINGS It goes without saying that the forthcoming presidential election will mark a watershed year for our island in peril. And while the call to ‘vote wisely’ is loud and clear, this means different things to different voters – depending especially on factors such as party preferences (even as party lines are blurring at a rate of knots), a yearning for ‘change’ (yes, again!) and a perception that ‘voting for the best of a bad lot’ will reap dividends (even if it hasn’t for some seven decades).

The incumbent has alluded to the fact that it is the people who vote for the ‘bad lot’ when general elections are held, and the presidential poll is about casting our votes for the contender who can steady a ship that has spent most of the last two and a half years finding ways and means to counter that sinking feeling.

Our preferences aside, it is unlikely that any of the presidential hopefuls would garner the 50 percent plus one vote that’s needed to claim an outright victory, which inevitably means that the count of preferential votes for the top two will hand the crown to the eventual winner.

The countless alliances and crossovers (‘political trafficking,’ as one Sunday newspaper put it recently) – in many cases, ostensibly while remaining in one party but supporting a contender from another group or an ‘independent candidate’ – is a phenomenon that has reached hysterical proportions even though their ability to swing scores of votes is questionable.

And if there is a need for more theatrics, there’s plenty of it on social media – by the very people who are mandated to elect our next president… in the name of ‘democracy’!

Indeed, vote wisely: the nation’s future is at stake… perhaps like never before.

– Editor-in-Chief