The provocative Donald Trump campaign, which was running out of steam, received an eleventh hour shot in the arm with an unprecedented announcement of the FBI director James Comey that the Hillary Clinton email scandal was being reviewed afresh. The agency is said to have admitted already that it has no idea whether the emails amount to anything of significance. They may even have nothing to do with mails to or from Clinton. The timing of the revelation of a possibly meaningless probe into the sexual misconduct of a longtime Clinton aide's husband is so suspect that even senior Republicans have lashed out at it. One of the most secretive men in investigation seems to have revealed his hand in an extraordinary intervention at a time when the presidential race is in the final dash to the winning post and millions of votes have also been cast in early polling.
Predictions of the outcome were almost leaning towards an inevitable Clinton victory on November 8 when a last throw of the dice seems to have had the effect of the sighting of a bomb at an election rally. The cryptic comments of the man in charge at the FBI have done nothing to douse the fires in an incendiary run-up to the election featuring a candidate who has riled everyone from Mexicans to Muslims but, most of all, alienated about half the population in his unseemly boasting of sexual harassment of women. It is on the cards then that even if Hillary were to be elected, as many beyond America are also hoping, she is bound to have an adversary who will be keen to keep on pursuing investigations into her private email system. The conclusion is there are interesting times ahead irrespective of what verdict the poll may throw up in finding a successor to the first black President of USA.
