Winning an American presidential election with anything less than the majority of the popular vote is seen as detrimental to the new president's command of power. It certainly hindered Josiah Bartlett during his first term in office, although no one seems to've cared to've informed George Bush Junior of this. Meanwhile, in the UK, New Labour flaunt their - much reduced - majority in the Commons as if it represents vastly more than the roughly one-in-three voters that ticked their box, and of course we are here only talking about those who could be bothered or weren't disillusioned enough to actually turn up for the ballot.

Now imagine the surprise of the presiding officer of polling station fourteen, in a city strenuously denied by the narrator of Saramago's latest novel to be present-day Lisbon, when on the ill-fated day of the local elections hardly anyone turns up to vote at all. Admittedly, it's raining cats and dogs, but since the representatives of the party on the right and the party in the middle have already boasted that this wouldn't stop their voters, who are renowned for their dedication to their respective cause, from turning up, this excuse is only available to the party on the left, and who would want to make such a claim anyway? Thankfully, late in the afternoon, when the sun finally shows its face, the voters turn up en masse, if still not in their accustomed numbers. The relief is short-lived when it is found that the majority of the votes have been cast blank.

This sets the stage for the new novel by the octogenarian Portugese writer, winner of the 1998 Nobel prize for literature, and outspoken critic of globalization and mass-consumerism (see, for instance, The Cave). Saramago is a master of irony, a skill which in this story he has honed to new heights. While to the knowledgable reader, i.e. someone versed in the basic tenets of anarchist theory, its attack on the modern democratic state might be all-too-thinly veiled, the response of the authorities to the 'epidemic' of voter apathy is hugely enjoyable. (It's hard to read this book without a constant smile on your face - and why inhibit yourself?) The powers-that-be - or at least were - seem to be aware that their arguments hold no water, yet they feel inclined to act the way they do. Their main frustration is not the loss of power or control, but the fact that the stubborn populace, despite being left to fend for itself, steadfastly refuses to descend into chaos, or 'anarchy' as the modern media would doubtless call it.

In order to prove, more to themselves than anyone else, that they are truly needed, the government, in a series of escalating moves, try their damnedest to provoke the capital's inhabitants, all to little avail. Various attempts are made to isolate the cause of the epidemic, each more disastrous than the previous one. The most entertaining part of the book is eavesdropping on the discussions that take place in the hallowed corridors and meeting rooms of power. Using this device, Saramago shows that the argument between those who claim that our leaders conspiratorially orchestrate every event and those who are of the opinion that our leaders simply don't have a clue is shown to be based on a wholy fallacious distinction: both can be true at the same time.

It should be noted that Seeing is some sort of sequel to Blindness, although all you need to know about that book is that four years previously, in a country similarly not Portugal, the entirety of the population, bar one woman, went blind in an unexplained epidemic that ceased as suddenly as it started. In an strategy not unlike New Labour's 'scientific' approach to policy formation (and with the same degree of success), the government of the country that is not Portugal are adament that the true source of the epidemic of blank votes can be unearthed by objective means. And when that doesn't work, they simply resort to making up a story and spinning the equally made up facts to suit the awkwardness that is reality. Again, parallels with current governance abound.

Platypus Bill