The diet of reheated promises, Brava island on Ulysses' menu

There is an almost poetic art to Ulisses Correia e Silva's political cynicism. The Prime Minister and MpD candidate to succeed him seems to have developed an unshakeable confidence in the collective amnesia of the people of Brava. After a decade sitting in the armchair of power in Varzea, Ulisses returns to the "Island of Flores" with the same poise as someone who has just arrived from a voyage of discovery, bringing in his luggage the same moldy promises, now wrapped in shiny campaign paper. It's the height of political reheating: they take yesterday's failures, season them with a bit of "development" rhetoric and serve them up as if they were fresh produce picked this morning.

The Architectural Miracle of a Health Center that Defies Gravity

The announcement of the new Brava Health Center deserves an internationally prestigious award, but not in the fields of medicine or public management; its category is unequivocally that of Scientific Fiction. We witness, between astonishment and amused indignation, a project that seems to have been conceived by a political "reverse engineering" that is absolutely unprecedented in the modern world: the building being built through the roof.

It's a delicious - albeit tragically expensive - metaphor for Ulisses Correia e Silva's governance of the island. In the MpD's cosmology, physics works differently. First, the media cover is erected with a bang; then the roof of illusions is installed, made of light materials like campaign marketing and empty promises. The foundations, the main walls and, above all, the essential stuff - such as specialist doctors, diagnostic equipment and oxygen - these are reserved for the next decade, somewhere in a utopian future that insists on never docking at the Port of Furna.

In Ulysses' Brava, health is not a fundamental human right, but a mere ornamental detail. It's something that can be solved, in the minds of Praia's strategists, by throwing a "first stone" which, after being carried from platform to platform, must already be worn out, polished by excessive use on the eve of the elections.

While the people wait for an ambulance that works or for an evacuation that doesn't depend on the mood of the tides and luck, the Prime Minister offers his best angle for the TCV cameras. The smile is one of circumstance, the speech is one of "modernization", but the smell that hangs in the air is not that of fresh cement: it is the musty smell of a promise that has already rotted on the shelf.

Building from the ground up is, after all, the specialty of this government: keeping its head in the clouds of propaganda while the feet of the people of Braga remain buried in the mud of oblivion. The health center may not have walls, but it has an impeccable political "design": it's transparent, invisible and totally immune to the reality of the facts. It's the miracle of the multiplication of foundation stones that, curiously, never become real walls.

The Ghost Ship and the Odyssey of Isolation

What about the eternal "Dedicated Ship"for the Fogo/Brava line? Francisco Tavares, former president of the CMB, promised twice and now Ulisses Correia has found the way to the Indies with this solution. This vessel has already become an urban legend, a "Flying Dutchman" of Cape Verdean waters that everyone hears about, but that no one - absolutely no one - believes will ever materialize under this management.

The Strategy is to promote a specific ship to break the isolation.

The execution will be to keep the island at the mercy of erratic stopovers, last-minute cancellations and logistics that would make a 15th century navigator weep with despair.

Sarcasm, one needs an iron "good will" not to laugh when candidate Ulisses talks about maritime connectivity after ten years of watching Brava languish behind a horizon of nautical promises that never leave the shipyard of intentions.

The Banquet of the Deceived, because the coup is here, fall who will

Ten years on, the balance sheet is clear: the Brava was used as a backdrop for campaign photographs, while the structural problems were pushed along. Ulisses Correia e Silva doesn't come to bring solutions; he comes to test the limits of the patience of a people he clearly considers naïve.

Requesting old promises and presenting them as a luxurious banquet is an insult to the intelligence of those who experience the difficulties of everyday life. It's opportunism raised to the state of the art: creating the problem by inaction for a decade and then appearing, on the eve of the vote, dressed as the savior of the country with the same recipe that has systematically failed.

The coup is there, mounted with all the rigor of a theatrical production.It's a plastic meal, with no substance and with expiration dates that have been expired since 2016. Ulisses thinks that the Bravenses are hungry for illusions, but the island has already realized that, behind the propaganda, the plate is empty. Whoever wants to falls, should take their own antidote against the political indigestion to come.

Moises Santiago