On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has come out to vote. Around three o'clock, the rain finally stops. Promptly at four, voters rush to the polling stations as if ordered to appear. But when the ballots are counted, more than 70 percent are blank. The citizens are rebellious. A state of emergency is declared. But are the authorities acting too precipitously? Or even blindly? The word evokes terrible memories of the plague of blindness that hit the city four years before, and of the one woman who kept her sight. Could she be behind the blank ballots? A police superintendent is put on the case. What begins as a satire on governments and sometimes dubious efficacy of the democratic system turns into something far more sinister.--