By JENERALI ULIMWENGU

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Quite some way to embark on a northern summer, our winter, and to announce the opening of the FIFA fiesta in Russia.

I watched the two new lovers as they took a stroll in the manicured loans of a Singapore hotel, and said to myself how things have changed, although there was that eerie feeling about the more it changes the more it is the same thing.

I mean, who is zooming who? Just a couple months ago LRM (Little Rocket Man) and the Dotard were engaging in a world cup of insults, each one trying to outdo the other in the basest form of verbal athletics.

But here they are now, almost holding hands but definitely touching, in the most lovey-dovey public display of affection, and the LRM smiling like he has never smiled before. (Well, the Dotard may be exempted from smiling, his facial muscles being restricted to growling only).

Whatever the loving couple agreed in their tete-a-tete may not be known for some time, and much of what we are getting from the commentariat of the world has to owe much to speculation.

All we know is that the Dotard has said he will scrap the war games his country holds twice a year with the LRM's neighbours to the South, and that LRM will “denuke.’’

It was a tremendous occasion, tremendous decisions were made, and LRM is a tremendous dude, actually one of the most tremendous dudes you ever saw… but all that is Dotard hyperbole from a man who has this tremendous capacity to see tremendous success before it happens. Tremendous.

World status

It does not seem to matter to the Dotard that in Singapore he singlehandedly conferred world status on LRM, who all along looked, appropriately, like the proverbial cat that had swallowed the canary.

The symbolism of the mélange of American and North Korean flags; the promise to scrap the war games; the Dotard's use of Pyongyang's adjective for these exercises — ‘‘provocative’’ — all suggest LRM is in the stratosphere, hovering above the Dotard, who stands rooted in terra firma with us.

Of course, a lot will be lost in attempts on both sides to spin the summit, each corner seeking to claim a victory of sorts, and it may not necessarily be that the devil is in the detail but rather that only the devil has all the details.

What do we make, for instance, of the assertion by Pyongyang that it was resolved between the two at Singapore that the US would remove all its sanctions on North Korea? When? Unconditionally? And just what did North Korea sigh up to? Comprehensive, Verifiable. Irreversible?

It is the American president's wont to snatch friendships from the bosom out of enmities and enmities out of friendships. Just like he did with Kim Jong Un and Canada's Justin Trudeau respectively. And he does it very fast, and the results are tremendous.

When everybody was saying the Singapore summit would be exploratory, the president was already seeing instant, tremendous success, even hailing the piece of half-blank paper in his hand as ‘‘comprehensive’’.

Power of bribery

But he trusts in the power of bribery, and he came with a little bribe for LRM just in case the latter was not impressed by empty talk.

He treated LRM to a PP presentation showing a video of North Korea as a transformed, prosperous and happy country under American tutelage, with crisscrossing railways, waterways, ports and condominiums.

It reminded me of the New Testament story about the devil taking Jesus on a guided tour and showing him a panoramic piece of land that looked like it had come out of Bukoba, with undulating hills and meandering rivers irrigating fecund soils, and promising to give it all to him if only Jesus would kneel and worship the Evil One.

Christ refused the offer out of hand, which is what Little Rocket Man did after the PP presentation by the Dotard.

Which is also what the African delegations attending the FIFA congress in Russia did with the ongoing bribery campaign by Morocco, which has been bribing African nations, not only to vote for it to host the next World Cup (2022) but also to legitimate Morocco's rape of the tiny Saharawi Republic.

Morocco failed, despite having bought most of Africa, and that was the first goal sanity scored in Russia.

Jenerali Ulimwengu is chairman of the board of the Raia Mwema newspaper and an advocate of the High Court in Dar es Salaam. E-mail: [email protected]