On their forays onto the international stage (a place many seem to prefer to here), our leaders proudly brandish the magnificent rainbow nation. As a people, we too boast about the ethnic and religious diversity that defines our country. Yet, how well do we really know our neighbours, once the stereotypes are done away with? Sadly, the answer is: "not very well". If we did, we wouldn?t succumb to the facile political slogans and hollow promises that are being proffered.

This benightedness will be especially marked in the coming months leading up to the general elections. A small band of Svengalis will wrestle for the hearts, minds and, especially, votes of an electorate that is being increasingly splintered by politicians seeking to curry favour with their "target markets" rather than the country as a whole. This strategy is neither new nor unique to Mauritius, yet one senses that the September jamboree is going to be even more sectarian than usual, thanks in no small part to the shortsightedness of the race frontrunners. Already, the spectacle is less than dignified.

Whilst one half of the governmental alliance is clamouring that all is well and we?re on the path to becoming the hub of all hubs, the other half is fighting an increasingly desperate battle to convince its supporters that it has not disavowed its core values. The opposition is claiming that economic power can be wrested from the hands of the Big Five without driving the country even deeper into the mire of unemployment and poverty.

This candid trio unashamedly ignores - in all but rhetoric - the nuances of contemporary Mauritian society and the challenges facing it. Their power struggles do little or nothing to address the greatest threat facing the country: atomization. Worse yet, they have largely contributed to exacerbating the problem. One party denies that the problem exists, the other is in danger of being atomized itself and the third is using it as a bank from which to draw political capital.

In the meantime, the 18,000 or so drug addicts are "still" being refused access to clean needles so that AIDS is spreading exponentially. "Poor" first-time drug offenders are "still" being sent to join the swelling ranks of the nation?s overcrowded prisons depriving families of their main breadwinner, destroying lives and costing the State millions of rupees annually. Entrepreneurial spirits across the nation are "still" being stifled by an ill-willed and inefficient bureaucracy. And one of the island?s last endemic forests is "still" in mortal danger. Both government and opposition can claim a large part of responsibility in all of this because they have both been in power since these problems exploded.

If it is true that humankind has been predicting the end of the world since the beginning of times, the current socio-economic climate is particularly propitious for the dissemination of doomsday scenarios. Unfortunately, some of these are well-founded. What is even more clear is that the inchoate political remedies that are being so garrulously hawked are not.

The electoral season promises to be one of the dirtiest in recent memory, which will further darken a national horizon already clouded by insecurity and instability. In normal circumstances, the electorate can be trusted to select the best person(s) to lead the country for the next five years. Unfortunately, choosing a candidate this September will be more akin to a damage limitation exercise rather than the explicit endorsement of a coherent agenda. As a friend pointed out, we truly are a rainbow nation because the different colours don?t mix much?