This election cannot have satisfied the thinkers in either party. The gods have spoken through the side of their mouths, I feel. The positive thing about it is that this country has achieved a new kind of honesty, a new willingness for introspection. Even the media mills have ground to a halt and seem to be reversing.

But the results are ambiguous, rewarding and castigating all. Let me applaud the winners and encourage the losers, as is just and fitting, but let me also draw some personal conclusions, if I may.

The biggest loser, I believe, was not this party or the other (both suffered losses) but the political class. I must emphasise the point that it was not politics that got a slap but the way the political class exercises it. At the end, and I mean at the polling booth, we were nonplussed and very often pure DNA - to use an over-used phrase - took over.

But if we vote that way, we are still at the tribal - not the thinking - level. I am not reflecting, by this, on whether things worked out well or badly, I am just stating that no election should be the result of a knee-jerk. It should be the result of conviction and this was not visible on either side, I am afraid.

Just 120 votes less on each district and we would have had a crisis. We do not need a crisis; we need competitiveness, if only for the future of our children, a point which both parties milked to a flat udder.

What caused the near crisis has and will be the subject of many a better brain than mine, though from what I have read so far it still seems a case of utilising maximum denial systems. Yet, there are glimmers of hope, of soul-searching and conscience-querying on both sides.

If anyone were to ask me what I think, I would say that both parties are so over-cosmeticised by their media that the honest men in either party are gagged and bound. If I am right, that is a sure way of killing democracy, because it thrives on the truth, not on truth after plastic surgery. I believe both parties are culpable of anaesthetising democracy and then submitting it to plastic surgery.

In both parties, I still notice a fear of the truth and a desire to hide it for fear of losing grip or power. The people have shown that they do not want that. They would rather have a strong leader who brushes away the dirt than one who scampers to hide it.

This country wants to get on with its living. This country no longer admires cleverness at excusing graft, it admires strength at crushing it. May God give the Prime Minister even more strength than he has already shown: There is an ardent prayer. I am writing with the force and the belief that what I am saying is what the people have expressed. Some, it is true, failed to understand the message and failed to clear the way for the national leader. I think they did much worse than those who withheld their vote because they voted badly.

Because of a number of factors, we now have a patched-up Parliament, which is something I hate. It is a construct not an artifact. I resent being represented by individuals who were not elected, though I know them all to be worthy. Because of a number of factors, we practically have no opposition, which I also hate and fear. I do not like what I see in the mirror every morning but it does improve what people see in me at work, no matter how much I hate the mirror.

God works in mysterious ways. He even uses fanatics. To them, who have a voice, and more than a voice in the media, I say: Tone down your derision, your scorn, your vituperation, your devilish glee.

Fewer adjectives on both sides and more reflection and measured comment are what is called for. Utter dedication to whatever cause reduces man to the level of the detested Taliban. This is not Afghanistan. The language and imagery used by both sides led one to think that each side had a god and the people were thrust into a quandary.

The political class must learn to use its media as tools not as weapons because, as things are, people and clear thinking are the casualties. Elections should not be turned into wars. The media only hurts the people through over-kill. I notice that the media can be used either to inflate an issue and over-expose it or to stifle it by hiding it.

God works in mysterious ways, and even uses fanatics, but then God discards what he no longer needs. Ask all the time-expired civilisations. Let the parties survive, for the sake of democracy. Let the Prime Minister work for the greater comfort of the people.