Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Lev Pake Reste Turns 10

Yes. Already. A recap. So Ramgoolam nominates Bheenick as Governor -- one of his best decisions ever but that too after a year and a half of doing God knows what -- but Sithanen is unhappy so he threatens to resign or maybe he does. The PM is out of the country at the time but makes an appeal to the Minister on national tv. The latter eventually changes his mind -- after about a week -- when his pick as the BoM chief gets the SBM chairmanship. But not before swallowing something that's not exactly a grass snake and creating an urgent need to amend one famous Chevenement formula.

That was a really strange week. See if a Minister cannot be present at his office there has to be a colleague who steps in for him. We've seen this so many times: another member of Cabinet will answer parliamentary questions on behalf of the officeholder when the latter is out of the country. If a Minister resigns our excellent constitution takes care of that seamlessly. And that too without the PM having to be at his desk. The Ministry can also be reassigned to another colleague. For example SAJ held the Ministry of Finance for a few months last year. So did Ramgoolam in 2014. But none of those happened back in February 2007.

Besides there were radio reports that updated us on the absence of Sithanen at the Ministry of Finance -- on an almost hourly basis -- and which wondered if the Minister would be back in time for the important meetings scheduled for that week. It's not any different from a hospital receptionist nervously wondering if she would finally see the surgeon walking towards the operating theatre for some critical intervention. It would be interesting to know how the meetings went on if they went on. If there was a Minister present. If not what was the explanation provided to the people attending those meetings. And how many were cancelled.

When he returned the Minister promised to catch up by working harder. Is that good enough? Did he take a salary cut of about 25% for that month? See he was not sick. He just took a week off trying to twist the arm of the PM. At our expense. It was obviously kind of hard to disagree with people who said that the guy believes he owns that Ministry. Plus various sources which revealed that the Minister again threatened to resign later on -- and that too more than once -- supported that general feeling. In fact this behaviour morphed into a national joke: minis sarye so let demisyon dan so pos.

The joke didn't exactly end there though. There was a brand new episode when he didn't get a ticket for the 2010 elections. Even after having badly screwed up the economy by any objective yardstick. Ramgoolam obviously missed a good chance 10 years ago to spare Mauritius from the trickle-down economics that has created so much poverty in a five-year period and set Mauritius on a low-growth trajectory for a decade. With the help of Lepep.

Finally Sithanen has been trying to make it almost impossible for us voters to dump a politician with an electoral galimatia that has party lists and double candidacies as its main attractions.

Who could he have in mind?

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