lundi 20 juillet 2009

Has The President of Seychelles relinquished the sovereignty of his office to accept being received in his own country by another National leader?

“The President of the UAE, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, announced this (US$30M grant, over 10 years, building and equipping an integrated modern diagnostic centre at Victoria Hospital, studying the economic viability of a new dam,...) when he received President James Michel at his official residence in Seychelles on Friday afternoon” (Seychelles Nation 20.07.09)

The president of UAE owns property in Seychelles and has turned the property into a private official residence.
When he does visit the country and occupies his residence, all rich and powerful and President of his own rich country that he is, and notwithstanding the respect and dignity which diplomacy and protocol demand he be treated with as head of a sovereign country, he remains a visitor to our country. A foreign and private citizen however rich and powerful he may be!.
If he were to invite the president to his residence, then surely protocol must require that as the only sovereign head of the land, the President of the Seychelles, is welcomed as a guest to a private house, as he would be in any other place in his own country
However, in the published ‘photo of the meeting at the Sheikh’s residence, we seem to see the Sheikh seated and framed by two UAE national flags, almost like as if he were receiving the President of the Seychelles in the UAE and not in Seychelles.
Is there an un-diplomatic but subtly clear message that we are expected to derive from this? A Seychelles flag next to the Seychelles President would perhaps have mitigated what seems to be a near undeclared take-over of the country by the UAE!
Do we so much starve for the millions that the UAE seems willing to throw at us that we would loose our very sense of what is proper and dignified, to the point that our president would accept a turn of the diplomatic table and be treated like a visiting head of state in his own country, by someone who is, to all practical purposes, his very own guest?
Is part of our sovereignty what we have to surrender in exchange for the Sheikh’s largesse?
Let us not be are blinded by gratitude when we go to fetch the cheque that we think and see nothing wrong in being treated like a subaltern in our own house by someone who is nothing more nor less, our guest!

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