Africa-Press – Mauritius. Social problems are worsening day by day with conflicts often accompanied by violence within families, assaults in the public square and other murders, accidents and seizures of drugs and arrests linked to drug trafficking which do not stop growing.
The police cannot be present on every street corner, nor can the government, whatever its political color, be held responsible for this situation. Moreover, those who commit these crimes are not all from the poor or “disadvantaged” classes.
So what’s going on? Yvan Martial: Let’s not canonize our past too easily to better demonize our present. Above all, we have a more efficient, especially written press, perhaps not sufficiently investigative, informing us better about crimes and accidents occurring here and there around us.
Are we more violent than our ancestors? Today, our newspapers peel the slightest aggression. Yesterday, two lines were enough to say that the corpse of a woman had been removed from the bottom of a well.
Impunity is not new. Toddlers spend days tirelessly playing electronic games teaching them to kill before they are killed. Who cares ? Certainly not the criminal, making a fortune by making these deadly toys available to them.
The cartoons they stuff themselves with are not more lenient or merciful. Their parents feed on action movies where the grapeshot can scroll for endless minutes.
This audiovisual violence is not gratuitous. It excites the bestial ferocity in us. Who benefits from this crime? Drug seizures are tips of the iceberg.
For one drug seized, eight or more are smuggled in like a letter in the mail. One mafia denounces another. We dismantle it. Others occupy the niche thus freed up.
One month is enough to eradicate the scourge of drugs worldwide. It costs four cents to produce. It is enough to offer it free to consume but under medical supervision.
Finished this market, because of this gratuity. More traffic. The empire crumbles. This does not suit multi-millionaire kingpins. Even less that of their countless proteges, rulers included.
The police cannot be around every corner. But it must be efficient and effective. We taxpayers pay our police officers to enforce public order. The candidates in our legislative elections undertake, in the event of victory, to form a government capable of ensuring the good governance of the country.
Woe to us voters if we make the wrong choice. We deserve our good governments as much as the worst ones. Choosing the best possible opposition is as important as electing an acceptable government.
Above all, let’s learn to vote for the best candidates available, especially if they have no chance of being elected, due to a disappointing electorate.
Enough with this false and fallacious thesis that our worst criminals belong to our poor and underprivileged classes. They are only more heavily sanctioned and condemned.
Their implacable misery often explains their crimes committed in desperation. A prison synonymous with moral rehabilitation may be the lifeline that has been lacking to them so far.
The rich not only financially speaking does not have this alibi. He only arranges so that his crimes, a thousand times more heinous, remain undetected and above all unpunished.
We will never have enough contempt to spit in their face. It is that we are perhaps no better than them. There’s worse than a scoundrel strutting around on a mountain of ill-gotten gains.
It is the politicians who draw them out by protecting them. There is no worse leprosy than that of the soul. We can’t do anything against them. Our spittle slides down their faces like water on a leaf of dreamberry.
Let’s not lose hope though. All the devils on earth will never be able to prevent a saint from radiating perfection. We cannot save the world. Not even our country. Save our life. Sanctify it. And we’ll already do half the job.
* What is certain, however, is that our “policy makers” and the institutions, supposed to monitor and fight the aberrations and other scourges of society, seem to be outdated.
Things are not like before, and it could be that there exist in our society several and different realities, evolutionists which escape the authorities concerned, the religious men, the NGOs, the press and the researchers.
Shouldn’t we still get to the bottom of things?
We are in no position to know exactly what was or was not going on in the country of Mauritius of yesteryear.
Even today, it is impossible for us to know what is really in the mind of any individual, whatever responsibility he exercises or neglects to do, within our society. Fortunately, we are not judges of anyone. So why waste our time judging what others are doing or not doing?
We must react, however, when we become aware that the way of doing or not doing certain people, especially senior officials, seriously harms the harmony of our living together or seriously compromises the quality of life of our children’s children.
As much as we can be understanding, indulgent, merciful, lenient even, in what concerns us, so much must we become intransigent when that of the souls in our care is dangerously threatened.
Nothing then can justify any abdication, any refusal to fight, on our part. Let’s leave your question aside, for greater clarity, let’s relegate to another place the semi-responsible that are our religious, NGOs, press and researchers (if they exist).
They do what they can. Often voluntarily. They owe us nothing, unless they are specially remunerated from public funds by us, the taxpayers, to assume a responsibility which they would neglect to carry out.
Our religious preach especially and unfortunately to converts, to the faithful, whom at the start we can classify among our benevolent and non-maleficent citizens.
Even if violent servants, incestuous people, drug traffickers, corrupt and corrupting people, potential dictators, slip among the sheep of the reverend or religious leader, it is not engraved on their forehead.
Even if it were, the preacher on duty would feel some embarrassment washing that dirty laundry in the middle of the congregation. One example among a hundred: a minus is a guest of honor at any liturgy or religious function.
The preacher on duty, of course, knows nothing of the perversity that may be lodged in this person. The sprinkler cannot invite the saber to reproach him for all his killings.
There are NGOs and NGOs. Some know only the service of others, preferably poor, even to no avail. Others register only if they know that there is the possibility of scholarships abroad, first class travel, juicy per diem.
Let those responsible for allocating these financial subsidies at the expense of us, taxpayers, the care of separating among these solicitors, if not solicitors, the chaff and the wheat.
Let them deal with their conscience, if they have one, because they don’t seem to fear the annual Audit rag. The press already has a lot to do to report what is bad but also and above all what is good, good, beautiful, fair, on our good Mauritian soil.
She keeps us informed. Sanctifying work par excellence. Henri Souchon said: I complete my daily prayer by reading the daily newspapers. A Gospel like any other.
We will also never thank our journalists for this other daily bread. Perhaps preferable to that of our excellent bakers to whom I hereby humbly apologize for my blunder.
May Le Pain des Iles especially not be angry with me! Our researchers may exist. We have great difficulty – in finding them. Let’s dream of a university capable of luminously intervening in our trial and error and offering us liberating tunnel exits.
There was, of course, a time when our national problems were solved by civil servants who were not necessarily “British born”, with the blessing of parliamentarians of the caliber of Edgar Millien, Emilienne Rochecouste, Renganaden Seeneevassen, a Harilal Vaghjee, an Aunauth Beejadhur, a Raoul Rivet.
These senior officials mastered their files and dared to stand up to a Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, a Razack Mohamed, a Kher Jagatsingh. A Frank Richard would never have accepted a transfer to the Cooperatives or to Sports.
We journalists, at the time of Independence, respected our permanent secretaries as much as the minus who could sit on a ministerial chair, infinitely transcending it.
Does this blessed time still exist? Have our civil servants become mere executors, waiting for the slightest eructation, even stupid, from a minus, coming from who knows where, perhaps as incompetent as his peers?
Finally, we come to our “policy makers”.
They are often conspicuous by their incompetence. But they applied for these heavy and overwhelming responsibilities. We did not go looking for them. They imposed themselves on us by their free candidacy.
We voters have mostly committed the monumental stupidity of trusting them. Let’s not be cowards like some. Let us fully assume our electoral responsibility.
The best citizen today is the one who prepares best now to vote as intelligently as possible in the next legislative elections. In other words, the one who is determined to vote for the best candidates on the list, especially if they have no chance of being elected. This is the salvation of our country, of the future of our children’s children. And nowhere else.
* We said at the beginning of this interview that no government can be held responsible for this situation, but it could be that an economic policy which, on the one hand, fails to reduce inequalities and, on the other part, promotes consumption, pushes some into illicit, even criminal, activities.
What do you think? I leave you the full responsibility for the possible payment in the irresponsibility that we should grant to the government in place, says Lépèp government.
Our admirable people have a good back when we become aware of the nepotism, of the “noubanisme”, raging in so many ministerial decisions since December 12, 2014. We might not have done better than the minuses who govern us, but we at least did not run for government responsibilities.
If they finally discover their nullity, they are free at any time to give us back their apron, to resign en bloc, to divest themselves of their ministerial and legislative responsibilities.
In short, to give back to the sovereign electorate their right to choose, hopefully more intelligently, the most competent government possible. In the meantime, what’s going on? The opposite of what your question wants.
Everything is in place so that a handful of privileged people, both in the public and private sectors, can receive monthly salaries in the millions, while so many heads of families fail to improve the quality of life of the souls of whom they have the charge, despite overtime, of 2nd and 3rd jobs, of odd jobs on their own because they must also undertake, to survive tomorrow, because their job hangs on a thread as fragile as that which holds the dismissal-sword of Damocles.
When the top of our pyramidal salary hierarchy is so easily sugared without worrying about the squalor in which the “ti-dimounes” are struggling at the base, we cannot expect any popular upheaval that can activate any economic spring.
Let’s start by getting rid of all our limousines worth millions without taxes before wasting our time and our saliva talking about the economic inequalities to be eliminated.
So much inequality there is, that those who receive above a threshold, that I let them provisionally determine, and that they distribute to those less fortunate than them what they have in excess. After which, I will agree to discuss economic and social inequality with them.
If I have one piece of advice for those who benefit in one way or another from the economic inequality that is rampant like a cancer in our society, it is this: friends in the afterlife, helping those who are currently in trouble. Tomorrow, you may need them in a hellish way. Do it today. Tomorrow might be too late.
* The way things are going, it would seem that we will need a commission of inquiry every five years so that we can fight the scourges that are eating away at our society and which, it seems, escape the vigilance of the institutions.
put in place at the expense of the State to combat them. . . The scourge of drugs is a global cancer that also eats away, but with indifference, the best in our society, especially spiritual ones.
A national crime, therefore, has been around for a long time, not to say forever, and on a growing national scale. We must ask ourselves: who benefits from this crime?
Minus swear to the great gods that there are no better eradicators of such a scourge than them.
We do not dispute their bombast but we reserve the inalienable right to evaluate their sincerity but above all their effectiveness, not on their beautiful, beautiful, words, but on the result that we hope will be happy and beneficial from their fight.
We have given them all the sovereign powers we have. That is to say the trust we have placed in them. They do not only control our Police but any official authority that can be exercised on our Mauritian territory.
It is up to them to explain to us how our prisons can become the headquarters of illegal drug trafficking, which can place sprawling orders abroad. Quit if such a responsibility is too heavy for your weak shoulders.
Prohibition in the United States of Donald Trump and family produced Al Capone and other equally mafia bosses, during the interwar period, in the last century.
When Americans had the intelligence to abolish Prohibition, they also killed the booze mafia. The scourge of drug trafficking is essentially based on a risky market because it has been deliberately closed and cordoned off.
This allows traffickers, accomplices but also protected, at the top of a global but also national pyramid, to voluptuously enjoy a juicy jackpot, artificially created by a new Prohibition, allowing the multiplication of Al Capone of a new century and millennium.
All because a bundle of weed, as easy to produce perhaps as a bundle of cotomili, can sell for thousands of times if not more than its cost of production.
Let’s eliminate this market by allowing our drug addicts to voluntarily consume the drugs seized, to begin with, but under total medical supervision, and we can possibly totally or largely eliminate this illegal market and especially the lucrative traffic.
This will not be done because it serves those, including powerful and well-placed people, who have every interest in seeing this traffic continue, even if it results in the assassination of an unfortunate octogenarian, having the misfortune of owning a necklace.
in gold, able to pay for one or two doses of this deadly poison, even if the drug addict is her grandson in whom this unfortunate woman had placed all her complaisance.
* Nothing has been proven so far and all who are summoned by the Drug Inquiry Commission are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but what we are brought to see and hear from some hearings of this commission of inquiry these days lifts part of the veil on the actions of part of the Mauritian elite.
Not pretty to see or hear, is it? One of the greatest misfortunes of our time, of our country, is the too long time spent between an often monstrously shocking offense and the sanction hoping to provide the culprit with the opportunity to pay, if possible, his formidable debt to society.
There was a time, in our country, when less than a semester passed between the offense and the sanction that we hoped would be reparative. When Justice sometimes takes decades to give a verdict that is not even indisputable, the People have completely forgotten what crime it was.
There is no longer any pedagogical significance, which can associate, in the minds of citizens, such a crime with such a sanction. Above all, let us not overwhelm our Justice.
If there may be a delay in her case, it is often due to other delays over which she has no control, perhaps also due to a lack of rigor and severity because it is also in the public interest.
To make a long story short and come back to the other end of the chain, in other words when a crime or misdemeanor occurs, including even non-fatal road accidents, common sense dictates that we strike the iron when it is hot.
This means that our Police has reasonably a fortnight to enlighten public opinion, give it the first indications, allowing it to understand how and why such an unfortunate event can occur with us.
It is not so much a question of designating one or more culprits with certainty and summarily stringing the noose around their necks, with great risks of always possible miscarriages of justice, as of reminding every citizen that he has no interest in take such risks, which could lead him into trouble.
We are no longer school children in “be-low”. We must understand, for example, that getting behind the wheel of a vehicle that can exceed 100 kilometers per hour and driving through inhabited areas is as dangerous as crossing the central bazaar with a loaded gun in your hand.
We will never be careful enough, even for professional reasons, to boil the family pot, and we must take certain risks that can endanger the lives of others.
It is not only physical dangers that can threaten the body of others. There are also moral, intellectual and cultural crimes that can endanger the souls of people less mature than us.
We come to those whom a government in place chooses to occupy high responsibilities. By voluntarily accepting such a mission, they agree to become models, examples, for all citizens. No one can honorably fulfill such responsibilities if someone can reasonably reproach him publicly for possible infamy.
To remain in office, to cling miserably to their possible “boutte” while waiting for a distant legal verdict to condemn or clear them, is to taint those who trusted them by perhaps inappropriately soliciting their services. Who should resign or who should ask them to resign? Leave these questions to their conscience. If they have one.
There is always the possibility for someone in a very high position to be put in this way, rightly or wrongly, in the hot seat, to take advice from mentors capable of advising him to get out of this imbroglio with his head held high, even if he must lose a few pennies, always miserable.
He will lose these but will retain his honor and the esteem of the population. It’s up to him to tell us if he cares more about his money rather than general esteem.
* In France, Francois Bayrou has, on his own initiative, submitted his resignation due to an investigation that is rocking his party so as not to expose President Macron and his government.
Prime Minister Jugnauth says to wait for the report of the commission of inquiry on drugs before acting and to demand the resignation of anyone, close to power or combining functions within the State, whose names are cited before this commission investigation and their traffic implications confirmed.
Your opinion? It is always easier for us to believe in someone who acts in an exemplary manner than in someone seeking to hide behind red herrings. One is believable.
The other must be. That said, Emmanuel Macron ingloriously gets rid of François Bayrou. To govern is to foresee. Not knowing that the MODEM was dragging this pan does not plead in favor of the new French president. Happy National Day anyway.
* We do not know at this stage how things will evolve at the level of the Commission of Inquiry and whether the names of lawyers close to the opposition will be cited or not, but one could believe that the Commission of Inquiry into the drugs could further weaken what remains of the Lepep government – although the ‘Amsterdam Boys’ affair in 1985 would not have ousted the then MSM government from power… What do you think?
The government in place has an excellent opportunity to know whether Lépèp, who voted for him on December 10, 2014, still has massive confidence in him or not.
All he has to do is present a candidate for the by-election, to be held soon in Belle-Rose/Quatre-Bornes. If he does not, ‘Lépèp Admirab’ will not be able not to understand that the rag is burning at the Hôtel du Gouvernement.
* The political context today is different, the MSM is lonely, finding itself only with the party of Ivan Collendavelloo at its side.
Paul Bérenger himself seems frustrated with the fact that Pravind Jugnauth cannot manage to get rid of all those whose names are cited before the commission of inquiry into drugs… A ‘remake’ of the ‘Remake MMM-MSM’ becomes complicated , it seems? Everything in its time. I refuse to consider any political alliance or misalliance before the end of any electoral term.
Let’s wait for 2019 to be wiser and answer such a question, knowing that in the meantime so many dinners at River Walk or elsewhere can take place, so many cakes hypocritically stuffed on the tongue, not necessarily the tie of a possible ally but ephemeral.
The Partial at No 18, on the other hand, allows our various political parties, if not small groups, to establish their electoral strength independently of the others. We beg them not to deprive us of such an unexpected “Maiden Plate”.
The way things are going, if the partial will actually take place, we can already predict that it is drug trafficking and its ramifications, including its networks of connivance within public and political institutions, which will dominate.
the electoral campaign – Roshi Bhadain’s battle horse, the Metro Express, will take a back seat. And, it’s going to hit the mark. . . Your opinion? Only fools can believe that the result of this by-election may or may not exert any influence on such a pharaonic achievement, which could turn out to be monumentally in deficit. This is more of a high commission affair. Who has received, must pay.
Let’s not forget that tomorrow we can have all the advantages or almost all the advantages of the light metro without the disadvantages, by favoring as much as possible, even to the detriment of private traffic, master cars, public transport by bus, by reserving by example to public transport vehicles on sections of the Royal Road, between La Vigie and Terre-Rouge. But suddenly no more high commission.
For More News And Analysis About Mauritius Follow Africa-Press
