Drowning out the election parades
No, the rain does not vote. It cares nothing for the ballot box. However, the rain does raise concern, whether it is coming down in torrents or drizzling over an extended period of time. This alone makes the rain something of a factor in the election race for local authorities in early November. What’s more, it’s coming down a lot cleaner than some of the decisions by Parliament’s investigative committees into a range of scandals. Meanwhile, the rain has caught the state mechanism sleeping, when is supposed to be on full alert to respond to any problems caused by weather phenomena. It has also revealed how much time it takes for the machine of local authority to grind into action. Some may argue that it is not the state’s fault that the national highway had to be closed once again at the pass at the Vale of Tempe; they may blame the latest landslide on the rain or Zeus, under whose jurisdiction the area belongs after all. The private company responsible for that section of the road closed it off for months after a deadly rockfall last year as it carried out studies and repairs. And now we have a new rockfall closing down the road, thankfully a small one that caused no injuries, on a side of the valley that apparently did not seem dangerous despite the careful research carried out and the state’s strict supervision of the company’s project to shore it up. The rain is also to blame for the fact that the country’s drainage system failed once more. Had the skies not opened up, our streets would not have closed down and we would have been able to rest assured that our mayors deserve our vote again because they have been doing so many last-minute improvements and getting so many long-forgotten projects off the ground. The rain is also to blame for the fact that party chiefs were unable to descend upon the masses, to shake their hands and proudly display their silent and blatantly unsupervised candidates for mayor and regional government chief. The pounding rain, well, rained all over this election parade. Maybe we should be grateful to the rain after all.
