This is a pretty lame arc. It's just not fun. Saotome clearly doesn't want this, but was sort of pressured into this, so this is pretty mean-spirited of Kujaku. However, despite having the guts to turn down a confession, also not saying no is so unbelievably pathetic , so it's hard to feel bad.
Similarly, it feels like the mangaka doesn't want this either, since so little effort is put into this.
Looks like we are getting an election cliffhanger for a month. As someone from the US, I am kind of election-ed out. So, at least they aren't stringing along the campaign for a bunch of chapters.