I keep asking myself. 

Is this an end, or is this a beginning?

Because it is strange and unexpected. 

It is also true and it is happening. 

The last thing I ever thought I would be doing, on the third anniversary of a massive Labour victory, was to be reliving a 1987 protest march without the maduma.

Deja vu all along. 

A sea of incensed people jostling each other for space.

A determined crowd.

A people with a purpose.

Someone , somewhere had betrayed their hope and they were not going to accept any more nonsense from anyone.

The country, the nation, the people were sustaining irreversible damage  

It had to be stopped. 

The corruption had to stop. 

And it had to stop NOW.

Many of the people present had denounced their PN wholeheartedly only three years before, hurling it into the Opposition with a vengeance.

Shredding their party of old to bits, and relishing the thought of dancing around the PN ashes in their minds.

And yet, there they were,  creating a political Phoenix, rising from the imaginary ashes of their PN . There they were, more vociferous and  more angry than the others who  had stood by their PN through thick and thin.

Oh yes, the switchers  , or rather the 'hope ' givers of the nation, were there and once more they were and are dead set on starting another revolution.

Only this time, they have learned their lesson. 

They will not be duped again.

They will be far more vigilant and careful before they weld their allegiance to a traditional political party.

They have listened to and believed in Joseph, and he has let them down because they had hoped he would deliver good clean governance. 

For them it is not enough that the economy has remained afloat. They want dignified politics. 

Corruption free administration.

They are now watching Simon. 

They are analysing PN's every move, its leader's every word, every action. They are not impressed by documents but by behaviour. And they dream .

They dream that Simon will sweep the Nationalist Party clean, that PN will metamorphose into a political force in which they can fit in, again, because otherwise they will have to seek elsewhere, and elsewhere is not the dying Labour Movement.  It will have to be something new. 

Something they will themselves create.

Then there were the Labourites. A look into their eyes was enough to convince me  how they felt. 

It was as if they were having an out of body experience. 

Shuffling along. Lost. Almost in tears. Disappointed. Betrayed.

Yet, marching fearlessly with the rest of us, supporting hope: the hope for a change in the way we do politics. Supporting a national stand against corruption, again. Only this time , to their utmost dismay, the young government they elected was the perpetrator. They were walking on their own imaginary ashes.

The country is at a crossroads.

The Labour Government can clean up immediately, consolidate and move forward to secure another legislature.

Or it can persist on the road to self destruction  which will come sooner rather than later.

If the latter happens,  a thoroughly renewed, thoroughly rehabilitated  post -decimation PN might snap the next legislature  by picking up its own pieces and  PL fallout.

Or, if the PN develops hiccups, the people will create its own baggage free political force,  with a realistic and studied political manifesto, just in time to give the traditional political parties a run for their votes.

A political phoenix is surely rising out of the ashes of the PN and the Labour Movement.

Its shape is already visible and the colours  are all there coyly rubbing shoulders and creating the missing shades.

It is going to be inherently beautiful but beautiful is not enough. 

We have to make it work.