Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives. Our powers of deduction tell us that this statement is true of any old day of the week, month or, indeed, year. Yet, there are times when one feels the weight of history burdening the quotidian a little more assiduously than usual, robbing it, even briefly, of its habitual banality. This is especially pertinent in the light of the hotly contested US elections, the results of which might or might not be known tomorrow.

Accusations of disappearing ballots and other electoral misdemeanours have been flying left, right and, well there is no centre in such a polarised country, so we’ll leave it at that. Notwithstanding the veracity of these allegations, their mere existence is an absolute scandal, tainting the political system, the party responsible for the dirty tricks and the one who allowed it to get away with the shenanigans.

Ultimately, none of the above really matters though, because Bush is going to win even if Kerry gets to sleep in the White House for the next four years. You see, even if Kerry does succeed - against all odds - in securing the presidency, he will be forced to spend his tenure attempting to disentangle the US from the myriad mires that the greed and hypocrisy of the Bush administration has got that country into.

The most obvious legacy is, of course, Iraq. Kerry has hinted, “à la Bérenger”, that he has a secret plan that will get the US out of Saddam’s old fief in four years flat. In the highly unlikely event that this is true, the Massachusetts liberal will be left with the Herculean tasks of neutralizing the noxious effects of his predecessor’s policies that landed the US in Afghanistan, a mammoth public deficit, a loss of international credibility, environmental abuses, high unemployment, eroded civil liberties and the list goes on…

During all this, he’ll have to deal with incredibly virulent right-wing pressure. Not the most alluring preposition for a man that “The Economist” qualifies as “determinedly unexciting, selling himself on biography”.

The election campaign has exemplified this. On the trail where they were meant to win them the hearts of the American electorate, Bush and Kerry bore uncanny resemblances to the twins, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, that Alice, of Wonderland fame, met when she stumbled “Through the Looking Glass”. In Lewis Carroll’s fantasy world, the two rotund brothers answer each other ad nauseam with the word contrariwise. Instead of formulating cohesive, stand-alone policies, the republican incumbent and democratic challenger were locked in verbal scuffles that lowered the political debate to juvenile “my-dad’s-stronger-than-yours-type” rhetoric. A sombre omen indeed…

A change in administration will have little or no effect on our lives in Mauritius. The country faces some tough times and the most we can hope for is being left alone to solve our own problems. Apart from Diego Garcia and our textile agreements, Mauritius has been relatively untouched by the American penchant for meddling or freedom-peddling and, as Janis Joplin sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”.