Cuhnelbald

Good-Bye Air Seychelles?

2011-11-22T06:44:00.000-08:00

“Answering a question regarding the uncertainty being faced by Air Seychelles employees now that the airline is being restructured, Mr Michel accepted that he had words of encouragement for the staff when he visited them earlier this year.
At that time he reassured them that the government will do whatever it can to ensure that they did not lose their job and the airline would continue its operation as the national airline.
“But today the situation has changed,” said Mr Michel.
He added that in spite of all goodwill, and the desire to do good things, often there are unforeseen circumstances upon which we have no control and in cases like that we have to be realistic and accept what we can and cannot do.
“Air Seychelles today is in a situation where it can no longer sustain its operations and the government is also in a situation where it can no longer sustain the airline, thus the decision for it to restructure and in the process it is inevitable that some employees are affected,” he said (Nation 22.11.2011)

Granted, no one has the gift to look into the future. Adjusting the present on the basis of what has been seen in the future, would effectively cancel out any future….. a tough paradox by any measure!
If no one can see into the future, most of us go about our everyday lives trying to project a logical course for each of our present realities reaching out into the future. Thus in most situations, each new day that dawns is one that meets up with planned anticipation, and, bar accidents of Fate, holds no surprise. This is the cornerstone of each one of our projects for personal and social development (training, job advancement, dating, marriage, family, holidays, retirement, etc)
Whoever fails to plan and organise a predictable future on the basis of logical extrapolation from clear and objective appraisal of present-day realities, is bound to come up with surprises and unending complex adjustments as tomorrow’s projects reveal unplanned and unforeseen obstacles.
The case of Air Seychelles’ November restructuration is a case in point, though, unfortunately, just another in a long and sad history of poor judgement of the Seychelles Government since 1977. This list includes SADECO, SEYCOM, SMB, IDC, Spirit of Koxe, District Council, De-linking, NYS, EDA, FoodPro, …….to the point that SeyGov-bashing has grown into a bore, were it not for the drama arising from broken personal dreams, each poor national judgement brings.

That within the space of a few months, a national airline, albeit a fledgling one like Air Seychelles, could move from a position of re-assuring robust and vibrant growth to one of re-positioning and restructuration, smacks of nothing less than lack of basic planning and perhaps the usual just plain, bad and dumb management.
The strength of any corporate entity often lies in the sum of its staff’s professionalism, integrity and diligence towards meeting both customer satisfaction and market targets as well as ensuring adequate returns on investments for the viability of the company.
The world in which the national airline operated provides few circumstances that cannot be foreseen and planned for in advance. When the writing is on the wall, he is dumb he who looks away.
Perhaps the President would do better to point the finger where it needs to be pointed, singling out the cancerous sore of individual complacency and ‘laissez faire’ that are at odds with the needs of the current airline market goals of pampering the customer, optimising operations on realistic, money-making routes as opposed to the money-drain of National Pride.
It is all very sad that those who had their fingers on Air Seychelles’ corporate reigns, never seemed to have fully grasped the scope of the cut-throat market in which our little carrier was flung! A vision for development, consolidation and investment was perhaps handicapped by cocky and naive over-confidence from those who were brought to manage something for which their only qualification was in being at the self-glorifying receiving end of good old state-orchestrated cronyism! Flying wings do not necessarily make one a competent International Airline Manager / Administrator
We over-reached back in the 1990s when we killed off the links and likes of Air France and British Airways, to better allow our self-inflated egos to fly our Creole Spirit.
We certainly mis-calculated again when we opened our access to three of the current best global-reach airlines, with limitless petro-dollar rich investment coffers!
It should not therefore be a surprise that the strength and aggressiveness of these more robust eagles may be the principal cause of the clipping of feathers from our fledgling’s wings, forcing its undignified withdrawal from the skies. And who would have guessed it? The Captain has been spared the indignity of preparing for this demise!!!

2011 Seychelles Elections

2011-10-04T00:31:00.000-07:00

There!
It is done!
The Seychelles’ 2011 National Elections episode has run its course. The national political divide hardly shifted when in May, 85% voter participation returned the incumbent President to office with a 55% majority vote leaving the Challenger fulminating in the enduring 41% doldrums.
Backed by this renewed victorious political wind, the ruling Party made some deft manoeuvres to steam-roll through their not-too surprising strategic move for new National Assembly elections, with the declared intent to “eliminate the opposition”,.
Not surprisingly, the Political Opposition Alliance objected and promptly called for a boycott of the National Assembly Election, leaving the ruling party with little other option than to engineer a puppet opposition willing to be soundly defeated.
Thus ordered, so delivered.
The Observer Missions have declared the whole process as free and fair, filed their reports, made the customary recommendations to make our elections freer and fairer and left us to our own devices.
With a 74% voter participation, the ruling Party can now congratulate itself to having been properly and dutifully handed over a 100% majority in the National Assembly. In the face of the Opposition boycott and the lame challenging duck of the PDM, the “first-past-the-post” majority system has translated its 31,123 votes from the 69,480 registered voters into a minority 44.8% victory leading to a resounding and absolute control of the National Assembly!
The new MPs now have the task to convince the nation that they deserve their Honourable titles.
They must foremost understand that they represent a minority of the electorate and have been ushered into office by the quirks of our electoral system!
They must learn that being Honourable starts with ensuring that the National Assembly must at the very least, “(live) up to its constitutional responsibility of assuring more responsive and accountable governance” (October 2010 workshop )
It must strive to enact just laws that reflect national consensus to steer the country forward as opposed to rubber-stamping the wishes of the Executive.
There will be no honour to remain besotted with keeping the party line and not heeding the needs and aspirations of the silenced 55.2% of the electorate

Democracy Delayed By Bernard Georges : My Very First Reaction

2011-07-22T00:15:00.000-07:00

BRAVO!
At last!
Somebody has provided a blunt and frank overview of the sickness in our land!
It would be a grave error for the powers that be to shrug off the disturbing truths about the overall conditions in Seychelles’ electoral system as a mere inevitable inconvenience coming from the other side of the fence.

That it is so, does not make the diagnosis any less valid.

Our Democracy can be likened to a sick patient in hospital.
The patient is gravely ill. Propping him up, dressing him up in nice clothes and proper make up may provide comfort but will not make the sickness go away.

It is time to heed the voice from the other end of the hospital corridor, from the 'Practicien' whom no one wants to hear, but who at least seems more concerned with providing a cure and a discharge than in ensuring comfort before burial.

Perhaps it is true that if democracy is our common way to the future, then multi-party pluralism in its current format may not be the most suitable medium, in that the latter, in all the years since 1964 (bar the 1977-1992 one party rule) has done nothing but to institute and perpetuate a national 55-45 divide of win-or-lose-all.

The question that perhaps need to be put is why does the incumbent government resolutely fails to understand that, in order for democracy to be allowed to take deep root and flourish, winning the majority vote, while it gives legitimate claim to the right to govern and rule, also demands that the woes and merit of the minority vote not be committed to the dustbin. Doing so can be an indication that, in the final analysis, what is sought is not democracy for itself, but to remain in power and using democracy as a convenient tool to achieve this goal.

Can one reasonably argue that only the Parti Lepep has the genuine better interest of the nation and that its leaders and representatives at all levels, the sole advocate for a better Seychelles? That any voice that rises to the contrary is devoid of merit? Or have we already crossed the line and we now find ourselves pitted on either side of the intolerance line, doomed to systematically oppose and ignore the other?

There are sufficient wise voices that arise and speak, in the interest of democracy and ultimately, for a better and vibrant civilised politics in Seychelles. Sadly, the voices are never heeded. Partisan interests are staked too high to allow the mechanisms of democracy to do anything but turn the wheels of power the way it is deemed it must be turned. That’s what the outright media control, imperfect election playing field, chequered political party financial support, polling-day check –points, voter assistance, voter intimidation, vote-buying, outright bribery, etc; are there for, along with blithely ignoring appeals for reforms and electoral corruption to be curtailed.

Perpetuating this mentality of winning election as an end in itself, may prove to be fatal to our democracy. The losing side may despair from their voices raised over flawed electoral laws and outright fraud never getting a fair chance at being heard. It may risk imploding into radicalised cells, eventually forcing necessary change as happened with the 2004 Ukrainian “Orange Revolution” and similar others throughout history , or like the current so-called “Arab Spring”.

We must hope that our country is far removed from this frightful spectre. And yet, violent overthrow of governments was something that, until 1977, was a reality we only related to on a detached level from the radio news bulletins.
And yet, when it actually hit us on the 5th June, it came through also as a result of the then electoral minority having despaired from ever receiving fair representation and attention by continued allegiance to democratic principles of the time. Does History therefore not hold a lesson for us?

M. Georges makes a compelling case. His arguments are fact-based and verifiable. Some reasoning are obviously weighted by virtue of his political stance, the latter deliberately admitted, perhaps in a bid to free us from the petty shackles of partisan politics.

There seems to be broad consensus that reforms are necessary. The new electoral champion has admitted so much through the recent amendments of the Constitution and the proposed other reforms in campaign funding, district authorities, ect.

The way forward from this point may be not so much as complaining, however justified one may be in doing so, that the reforms are so diluted as to be meaningless, as to come to grips with the undeniable fact that a victorious political party will always set about to implement its own wining agenda and that it becomes the losing side to pick itself up to be more forceful and convincing for the inevitable future bouts!

We must work with and in the system to beat it at its own games.

We must cry out loudly for further electoral reforms.

Our elections are held on the basis of electoral areas and voters registered to vote in each area. We must therefore pay particular attention as to how the electoral areas are constituted and how voters are registered in each area.

Consider these:
a) our electoral areas are defined by law.
b) The population of any electoral area is never the object of any legal and binding registration, other that which civil records may purport to show or that the district authorities may aver.

In short, and in the context of our islands where everyone knows everyone, including which party one or the other is likely to vote for, the voting population in any electoral area may be shifted at will ( and often is) to strengthen or weaken one position or the other.

When the Roche Caiman electoral area was created, its new housing estate was filled with known supporters of the incumbent government, with a smattering of known “dissidents” as smoke screen.
The tactic was used again for Perseverans. While the latter still awaits formal set up as an electoral area, it is pinged to the nearby electoral area of Anse Etoile, a coveted Opposition seat. Just before the June 2011 presidential election, enough Parti Lepep supporters were deliberately housed and accepted as being duly registered for the Anse Etoile electoral area. The June 2011 election outcome for that district was as unsurprising as strong winds in Vann Swet.
This shifting of people around through the Housing smoke screen has been well tried. New housing estates not unsurprisingly come up in areas where it becomes easier to weaken the opposition in their strongholds or where they may threaten the Parti Lepep seats. (Les Mamelles, Au Cap, Belombre, Beau Vallon (Beau Belle), St Louis, Glacis, etc.
This is one aspect of the perfidiousness of the current government that M. Georges could have considered. Social Housing as an insidious tool for undetectable vote rigging!
Command and control the district population migration, and you control any electoral vote outcome. Any Electoral Reform that does not address this matter will not be a reform at all!
If we do not move towards formal district population registration, then we should, in the interest of fair elections, do away altogether with the current electoral areas. We are small enough a country to be able to ensure proper local development and government without the hassle of local representatives.

…to be continued/

The Future of our Democracy shall be the Judge

2011-06-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

The first summary of the cabinet meeting, rendered public in the nation of 02.06 read like something at the end of a fairy tale when the badies have been bested and the do-gooders can set about the business of making the world a better place for ever after!
That there was even a report of the last cabinet meeting was in itself an event. Unless I have not been particularly attentive over the last 34 years, this is the first time, and despite numerous appeals, including, I believe from the former –and first-President, that direct information is made available on what the top echelons in the land have been discussing and decided upon in the interest of the nation. Let us hope that this first positive step in the right direction has not been more of a reflex magnanimous action from the buoyant electoral victory mood.

Seychelles being the small-island country that it is and the Seychellois being so passionately divided over politics for so long, the suspicion with which each side of the local political spectrum regard each other will likely endure and put to serious tests any move by the ruling party and incumbent government to make amends and move towards invigorating our democracy. I for one, while happy at the new developments, and hopeful that they are sincere and will make significant impact on our democracy, remain suspicious that they could also very well be another clever bit of window-dressing, a return to the good old, time-tested “make the right noises and they’ll leave us alone”. That the Presidential Candidate did not allow the merest whiff of what sounds now as a laudable move, is in itself, eloquent!

It will take more than just one cabinet meeting summary report to instil confidence in our democracy and Government. However, there is cause to hope that, after being rendered opaque by partisan politics for so many decades, the light of reason may finally be shining on the vision for the New Seychelles, by virtue of the far-reaching decisions taken by the new (renewed) cabinet.

Whilst Cabinet and the AG’s office by themselves have no authority to amend the Constitution, it is comforting that instructions have been given for the necessary proposals to be prepared for consideration by the National Assembly to amend the electoral laws allowing for an Election Commission, as opposed to the current One-Man Election Commissioner. This being a cardinal point of contention by the local political opposition, there is every hope that the amendments will receive the necessary votes! Unless the small prints to set up the Election Commission are such as to render the whole exercise pointless.

The proposed amendments of the Political Parties Act to allow regulation of Political party’s funding sources and expenditure of funds are welcome. They may introduce an element if not of control, then at least of transparency. Provided of course that the amendments include suitable provisions that make clear differentiation between Government’s funding programs and those of the ruling party’s. There is really no use going any further with the proposed amendments if they will offer nothing more than a repeat of de-linking of 1990’s vintage!

It took two presidential elections, a traumatic display of state-orchestrated police brutality against peaceful protests, a Riley Report and five years of acrimonious accusations from and by all sides, for Government to finally understand that it cannot make any pretence at wishing to uphold democracy without allowing unfettered freedom of expression. Let us hope that when given the chance and the means to finally operate, Radio (and perhaps TV) Freedom will find a new spot and live up to expectations to fairly and responsibly inform, educate and entertain rather than being another loud voice in a “dialogue des sourds”.

Dare we hope that the proposed new local governance system will not be mired in local partisan politics such that communities can truly participate in local decision – making? Experience caution us to be wary! In 1992 the District Council Act was rather short-lived when it became apparent that the ruling party could face political opposition from freely-elected local representatives at the local level. The District Administration quickly took over to maintain the ruling party’s controlling hand in the management of local affairs. A whole Ministry was created to this effect, contributing to blur the lines between government programs to local communities deriving from a public service and outright political shenanigans to bolster local support for the ruling party.

The future of our democracy will be the real and unforgiving judge of the newly re-elected President!

Putting Seychelles before all else

2011-05-26T02:15:00.000-07:00

“..Putting Seychelles before all else” is indeed a noble cause for all the nation’s children to work for.
Fresh from its last and fourth consecutive electoral victory, the ruling party can afford to be magnanimous and invite everyone to take a rightful share in the task of nation building.
The local political opposition will, however, most likely and not unreasonably so, take the call join to in this noble cause, with a pinch of mistrust. Similar calls were made in the past and not much changed towards reinforcing our democracy, whether or not the political opposition made common cause with the ruling party.

Firstly, a political opposition has an unchanging reality the logic of which it cannot escape at the risk of losing its "raison d’être". It exists as a counter-balance to the government, a voice of dissent that, in a functioning and respected democracy, offers the vital check on, and alternative views of, government policies and programs elaborated from the ruling party’s political agenda. The logic for a political opposition is that it cannot afford to jump into bed with the ruling party, unless the nation confronts a major crisis the nature of which threatens national sovereignty and overshadows all partisan politics.

There not being, at this point in time, any crisis facing the nation, the call to the opposition from the ruling party must be taken as an invitation to do nothing more than assume its role as an opposition in a democracy, with responsibility and vigour. To use all means allowed under the Constitution to be as effective and vocal in the support and defence of the interests of the 45% of the electorate it represents.

The ruling party may cackle, strut and preen about the Government and the President being for every Seychellois. The reality has, is and will always be different. Our country has, is and will likely continue to be victim of the great political divide that has so divided us since the first days of the quest for political representation around the end of the 19th century.

Since then, political intolerance across the highly polarised divide has endured both the bumbling pre-independence years and the long, dark ones of One-Party rule where it was carefully cultivated to reach its culminating point to allow for all the country’s children who had a dissenting view of the ruling party’s policies to be crassly labelled as enemies of the state, to be persecuted, deprived of employment, shunned from the public service, handicapped in all economic ventures, blocked from business, when not imprisoned, tortured, forced into exile, and sadly for a few of them, killed outright!

If most of this last ugliness has washed away since the 3rd Republic, the nation remains polarised on its usual 55-45 split. The 45% minority still endures the frustration of the government of the 55% majority playing lip service to democracy while carrying on with business as usual of a one party state logic. No amount of cajoling or entreaties will do anything to help bridge this gap and "dialogue des sourds" unless there is a genuine efforts by the ruling party that it has a duty not only to make comforting speeches about national unity but to also vigorously pursue a national plan of action that will wear away at the mistrust and suspicion that bolster the political divide.

Nothing will change unless the ruling party makes an effort to recognise and respect the vital role of a political opposition in a democracy, and allows it to assume its role unfettered, as the Constitution allows it to.

Nothing will change unless the ruling party understands that, while the all the children of the nation expects to share in creating and benefiting from the national wealth, 45% also feel the need for the greater enjoyment of their constitutional rights, liberties and freedoms. As president Barrack Obama recently confirmed “…all human beings are endowed with certain rights that cannot be denied.”

This is the core “revendication” which the Seychelles President consistently fails to even understand, to wit his last inaugural address, where not one word was uttered, despite mild placating words in trying to define democracy as a “ dynamic process. In the New Seychelles we shall continue to put in place and strengthen our legal and institutional frameworks to ensure the progress of our democracy. It is my aim to improve on our achievements and to reinforce the rule of law, good governance and transparency. Seychelles is determined to provide a shining example of the development that is possible when good governance is prioritised”

Without the government respecting and guaranteeing our constitutional rights and freedoms, there is little chance of our democracy going any further than from the hole in which it is stuck!

But perhaps there may be a shift in the wind. In stating that “..it is time for us to consider our brothers and sisters who may not share the same opinions as we do, not as our enemies, but as Seychellois who are also contributing to the future of our country, even if we remain political adversaries” president Michel may perhaps be having the first whiff of understanding that business as usual will need to yield to the higher recognition that we need to bridge the gap of political intolerance. An understanding that will perhaps grow into recognition that, indeed, the political opposition and behind it, 45% of the population, are no longer enemies, but sons and daughters of the land, equal before the law, with as much rights and freedoms to be respected as everyone else.

From this, there could be a chance of us all to work, each in our own ways, towards reinforcing our democracy, creating national wealth, ensuring professional and ethics-bound public and security services, impartial and effective justice, fighting rampant social scourges, securing the future for generations to come. Then and then only, shall the country be proud to look the rest of the world in the eye and not blink one bit!

The first steps towards this noble goal shall be when:
* Appointments or promotion to senior and top executive posts in the Public Service (including within the military, paramilitary and police) along with membership to Parastatal Boards and Statutory Bodies, are decided on merit alone, the latter defined in terms of qualifications, proven experience, seniority and aptitude, as opposed to affiliation to and "militantisme" within the ranks of the ruling party.
* The Ministry of Community Development ceases to be, via the District Administration, the extention of the ruling party’s arm in ensuring politically- motivated local community development programs. Members of the district administration should at least reflect the prevailing local mood and aspirations.
* Specialised Health Care, Professional Training, along with financial support for commercial ventures, are decided upon by professionals on the merit of each case and on known, published criterion
* Housing programs, the concern of all governments, are developed in a serious and economically sustainable manner, and in accord with what the country can reasonable afford while not stinging on basic standards.
* Housing allocation and Social Welfare criterion are set, if necessary by proper legal instruments, and applied openly and fairly without interference by local politicians.
* Our human rights including freedom of speech and association along with no unlawful detention, a stop to all intimidation, and removal of all impediments to lawful assembly, broadcasting and publication are vigorously upheld and guaranteed. When no one may die not from known, medically established cause, in our country without there being a proper public inquest in the cause and circumstances of the death and, where applicable, criminal charges diligently pursued through the courts.
* Elections are handled by an impartial commission comprising persons of impeccable integrity with no known political affiliation. When the Voter Register is based on a verifiable district / national population database with cross-referrenced bio data, becomes credible from being open to reasonable challenge, is rid of those who are registered under multiple names from different districts, when a mechanism for inter-district migration record and control is set in place for election-registration purposes.
* When the Judiciary becomes truly impartial and given the means to properly discharge its responsibilities as the vital 3rd arm of our national setup. When the Courts will grow to grant equal considerations to the legal worth of all and every case without regard to the parties involved.
* When the national security forces grow to develop into a professional corps, governed by their oath to serve the country which is defined as excluding exclusive favours to the ruling party and its leaders and systematic intimidation of known opposition leaders and supporters. When new rules are put in place for the possession and display of firearms in public by the security forces and when there are professional rules of engagement in the use of firearms for maintaining law and public order. Such that no member of the security forces can continue to feel being above the law, with relative freedom to use deadly weapons such as in simple matters of search and arrest.

These are little steps that can be taken within the short term, will go a long way towards establishing trust in our system, make little demands on our economy and can deliver big dividends towards reinforcing our democracy. Then and only can the children of the land all join in the task of nation-building, certain that each is respected and none can be unreasonably expected to compromise one’s political position.

Thirsting for Freedom

2011-05-23T01:41:00.001-07:00

The serenity with which each of us face our everyday life is always the result of compromise reached between what each of us believe in and seek to achieve and that of the next person’s. One’s beliefs and pursuits have as much merit as the weight with which we measure them against those of other’s. The glass can be half empty, just as much as it can be half full. There is little point is fighting over which version is more truthful.

Thus it was that on Saturday night, the dream of finally quenching my thirst for freedom was once again blighted by the SPPF-PP election –winning steamroller.
Some may argue that mine is a dream not based on the realities of the present-day Seychelles. Some will define the latter as being the place where a government inherited from a 1977-coup d’etat is growing up into a modern and respected democracy while orchestrating considerable local popular appeal, recognised and respected human rights, thriving economy with both local and international investments, including those from petrodollar–rich Gulf States.

Let there be no doubt that there are sufficient numbers of my fellow countrymen who either fully believe that this is indeed the case or who have never been particularly concerned over the intricacies and complexities of democracy, human rights and the economy, as long as there is always food on the table, clothes on one’s back and a house to shelter from the storm!

The last three consecutive elections of the Seychelles’ 2nd Republic from 1993 are eloquent on the consistently 50%+ support granted to the SPPF-PP, former One Party State, government. The ballot boxes of Saturday 21st May 2011 did not falter from yet another confirmation in both popular support and endorsement of the government’s populist social and economic development programs. 55.43% is as decisive as any electoral victory one can get in any democracy!!.

What’s the use of cursing the majority of the Seychellois voters’ vulnerability to pre-election generous gifts and honeyed, vote-winning campaign propaganda. In this they are no different from other voters across all continents, regardless of how deep democracy is rooted, respected and upheld.

What we should perhaps curse is our inability to cut across the academic rhetoric of our campaign for democracy to link it directly to the voters’ real and daily concerns. To do this, we need to find a way to educate the voters on how we have been and continue to be walled in by the nation’s pervasive dependence on state- benevolence, with far ranging impact from our jobs, formal training, social welfare, housing assistance, extra medical care, business facilitation, service infrastructure to our leisure, sports and cultural development.
These daily practical considerations far outweigh the merit of taking a moral high ground, particularly in defence of the often elusive extravagance of rights and freedoms.
We need to succeed in persuading the voters that the time will come when we will each need to weigh the importance of democracy, rights, freedom, equality before the law, equal opportunities for all, responsible parliament, independent judiciary and accountable, transparent government, that define the long term basic quality of our everyday lives against the immediate impact of material favours that make us see one day through to the next.

This is indeed what has driven revolutions throughout history and perhaps to a great extent, is the galvanising force behind the ongoing events in the Arab world. The thirst for freedom cannot be quenched from the well of immediate and short-term material comforts.

The voters must be educated to fully understand that the nail driven into the coffin of our rights and freedoms is real and occurring everyday, in big and small moves.
It is doing so, each time that the state apparatus of security clearance turns some of us away from a job opportunity, career advancement, promotion, training. A security clearance that departs from seeking to establish the threat level that may be posed on a known and declared reasonable need of state security, to embark on an evaluation of one’s adherence to a certain political party and ideology.

It does so when political affiliation is a discriminatory tool used in everything from a favourable administrative outcome for social assistance, some sensitive town and country planning matter, to a licence or business venture.

It does so when we continue to allow fear to rule our lives, in part from our not having forgotten the killings, disappearances, arson, criminal frame-ups and forced exiles upon which the present government built the foundation of its modern fortress.

The same is achieved at each time each of us shrugs off reports of State transgressions in upholding the rule of law, transparent and accountable government by consistent disregard to review the Public Order Act from the One-party era, endorsement of obvious political discrimination by the police and state security forces, failure to manage public assets in transparent transactions, or from taking decisive actions to root out corruption in the public service, etc.

It does the same when we fail to weigh the import of actions and declarations, however small or big these can be, by those who are entrusted with the highest office and duty to safeguard our democracy, rights and freedoms. It is, for example, a testimony to how disrespectful the Speaker of Parliament can be to the values, and by extention, how undeserving he is, of his office, when he makes a public declaration that the political opposition must be eliminated!!

It does so when we remain indifferent to our public-funded daily newspaper blatantly flouting the basic principles of impartial journalism by consecrating a special page of each publication to the President.
It does so when we fail to recognise that receiving some crumbs from the national cake, is part of our rightful claim rather than being something for which we should be thankful.
It does so when we remain silent at the slow and insidious erosion of the dignity of our elders by state largesse that is always vocal on its material worth and silent on its moral merit.

The quality of our lives will never change, unless we can each see beyond, and turn away from, the pre-election gifts and honey.
It will never change as long as the electorate continue to be easily swayed by promises of more shared wealth and material comforts and remain unfazed by speeches on freedom and liberty.
A new Seychelles has been promised. It will not be one based on the strengthening of freedom, liberty and rights. It will be another 5-year extention of the patronising one derived from “remaining close to the people…..and working hard for them….a vision to build a new Seychelles…”
Beyond the obvious rhetoric tones, perhaps we should recognise that if nothing much will change, then at least our wounds will heal and will have made us stronger for the next bout. By then, we will perhaps have developed a strategy to bring down the panem et circenses Election-Winning Machine of the SPPF-PP.

This will perhaps include having an Electoral Commission as opposed to the current one-man Election Commissioner, whatever his merit and the level of his integrity, appointed by the president, and Election officers who remain members of the public service and therefore subject to the whims and caprices of that Administration.

The new strategy will perhaps also include a credible voters’ register that will have debunked all attempts for a person, under various guises, to be recorded as an eligible voter in different voting centres, and other attempts to surreptitiously arrange for voters to be transferred from one voting centre to the next depending on the strength of a given contender in one or the other district.
In this regard, it may be necessary to secure a viable means by which the actual district population can be established, and arrange for a formal and verifiable mechanism allowing easy record of changes in the district population database (births, deaths, migration) and from which the district voter register will be derived. As it is, the current voter increase in certain districts from 2002 (51730 votes cast) to 2011 (59242 votes cast) defies the logic of the national (7512) 14.5% average: Anse Etoile (60.7%), Baie Lazare (32.8%), Beau Vallon (35.4%), Glacis (68.4%), Pointe Larue (40.6%), Roche Caiman (28.8%), Bel Air (–6.3%), Grand Anse Praslin (-4.7%) Port Glaud (-5.4%) St Louis (-0.8%)

More importantly, it shall also perhaps be the marking moment when our democracy and electoral set-up will have started to be transparent and trustworthy enough to be spared the scrutiny and judgement of foreign observers.

In the short-term, let us be prepared for the griping and moaning from post-election social and economic burdens that will surely repeat themselves.
As a true democrats, I for one, must be resigned to recognise that 55.43% of my fellow countrymen apparently do not share my views. I must therefore join the ranks of the 44% to respect the verdict from the ballot boxes, however warped and a perversion of my definition of democracy, it may be!

Has the La Misere Community been sacrificed on the altar of “Raison d’Etat?”

2011-04-14T01:08:00.000-07:00

I read with interest, the nation’s 14th April report of the Seychelles’ Minister for Internal Affairs…. responding in the National Assembly to a Private Notice Question from the Leader of the Opposition on the matter of compensation payment to the families of La Misere whose water supply was polluted from works underway to construct the UAE Sheikh's “palace”!

There is no doubt that the Seychelles Government, through the offices of both the Attorney General, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, President Office, Internal Affairs and the PUC spent considerable energy in sorting through the complex web of causality and accountability to negotiate a settlement.
There is also no doubt that the mobilisation of the La Misere Community, contributed to keeping the pressure on all parties for the matter not to be brushed aside. This in itself is a significant first in our country. One where a community can, by itself –allbeit with perhaps some underlying coordination from those who sought to gain political capital from the situation- rise as David to tackle and call to task the Goliath in both our Government and the all-powerful UAE sheikh and his construction company. (Some may reasonably argue that under our current legislation, BOTH the latter should be held responsible!!)

It is a good thing that ASCON, the construction company, has recognised being at fault and committed itself to compensation payment.
The responsibility of ASCON for causing the damage having been established and accepted, one would have thought that in the search for fair compensation, the negotiating parties on the Seychelles’ Government’s side would have had foremost in mind, the immediate physical and psychological trauma and suffering the la Misere community endured, (and the probable long term effects that some will likely be required to manage each time they turn on their household water supply). This and this consideration alone should have been their motivation to hammer out a deal with ASCON.

This is not the impression I get when I read the nation report of 14th April. At the end of the day, what has transpired seems to be the priority need to settle compensation rather than take the ASCON bull’s horn and bring it to fully and completely settle the tort it caused.
I read that ASCON has:
a) agreed to a limit US$20,400.00 per household (?) person (?)
b) not agreed to pay compensation to:

i) home owners who were not occupying their houses at the time of the damages but whose house plumbing installations were contaminated.

ii)bona fide persons, not legally residents of the area but who were visiting relatives at the time and who were thus exposed to the contamination as were the usual residents.

While I acknowledge the inevitable give and take in any negotiation, I am of the view that when the Seychelles representative went to the negotiating table, notwithstanding that the public prosecutor has little business dealing with such matters, he/she did so as a sovereign state representing its citizens who suffered from established negligence and disregard to our Public Health Act by a private entity. Our representative must have done so with the certainty of our infringed laws and good cause on our side and the greater interest of our citizens at heart, not those of safeguarding the bilateral (sic) cooperation between the Seychelles state and the UAE through ASCON.

This latter is what seemed to have transpired.

How can the good Minister Morgan justify the government failing “to get a settlement with ASCON that covers all the categories of people involved”?
This implies that our negotiator abandoned the latter “category” knowing full well that they were deserving of compensation. That the government took “its moral responsibility and approached some of its foreign partners with the aim of increasing the money paid out to the victims who would not have been paid enough with ASCON’s offer,” is proof enough that the interest of the La Misere Community seems to have been sacrificed on the altar of “Raison d’Etat” and the compensation settlement expediently negotiated, perhaps in a complex mix of election deadlines, not wanting to kill the golden goose, the mirage of a US$20K manna falling in the wake of raw sewerage flowing out of household taps and not least, not appearing to be ungraciously rocking the good UAE sheikh’s boat!

In another time and place, there would have been a properly conducted litigation through the courts and settlement reached from a fuller and fairer appraisal of merits and dues of the La Misere Community, on the basis of He who Causes Suffering Must Pay Damages in line with the seriousness of the suffering caused. Our Seychelles Courts have shown that a person’s ruffled pride and reputation through real or imagined malice is deserving of US$36K compensation. What is the worth of real psychological damages and established medical conditions suffered by a person exposed to drinking water from his residential plumbing, contaminated by raw sewerage arising from negligence and nonconformity to the law, by a third party?

"O" Level Certification in Seychelles existed well before the 1980s

2011-01-12T23:47:00.000-08:00

"Seychelles’ public education system has constantly been looking for the most effective system of assessing students’ performance since the 1980s.
For instance, much of the work done in the latter part of the 1980s, notably the Creighton Consultation Report of 1988 and the deliberations of the sub-committee on assessment in 1991, were seminal in paving the way for the introduction of the Ordinary Level General Certificate of Education (or O-level)"…….…..
(Seychelles Nation 12.01.2011

This reads like an awful warp of reality.
That the Ministry of Education was undertaking a review of student assessment in the 1980s is beyond doubt! However, it is a gross mistake to say that the 1988 Creighton report and the 1991 Assessment led to the introduction of the University of Cambridge “O” Level General Certificate of Education.(UCLES –GCE or GCSE –“O” Level)!

From well before the 1950s and up to the 1980s, the GCSE “O” Level was pretty much entrenched as THE assessment model for all students enrolled in a 5-year equivalent secondary education.

This was the case at the Seychelles College (successor to the St Louis College and King’s College of pre-1944 Education Act), and Regina Mundi, where the “O” level qualification was the key to securing the next Advanced Level High School Certificate of Education or “A” Level, itself the principal key to any University Study.

The post –1977 government of Seychelles turned away from the UCLES’ certification when in 1983, it closed down the Seychelles College and Regina Mundi Convent, the 2 principal Senior Secondary schools offering “O” Level qualification.

The suitability of the UCLES certification has been (and to some extent continues to be) a matter of contention among Pedagogues across the whole spectrum of cultures where the UK-based system is upheld. Most Secondary / High schools now tend to opt for the IGCSE certification.

Perhaps the closing down of the Seychelles College and the Regina Mundi and refutal of the “O”Level and “A” Level certification was a result of our own displeasure with the so-called “bourgeois” system. This however, is now a moot point in so far as the UCLES “O” level and “A” Level certification were re-introduced in the late 1980s at the ill-fated NYS of 1981.

In short, UCLES “O” Level was not introduced in the 1980s! It was there since well before. It was the certification that allowed most, if not all, of the current leaders in the Public Service, their ticket to Post Secondary and University qualifications.

I Am Not Buying It !!

2010-11-17T01:44:00.000-08:00

It’s been awhile since it was revealed that the United Arab Emirates was again ready to dump its much-coveted Aid Grants to the Seychelles’ Government in the form of patrol boats, helicopter, a new $multi-million Coast Guard Base, coastal radar installation, etc to boost our military defence capabilities.
That the Seychelles’ coastal defence has always been boosted by foreign countries’ assistance is well established. After the helicopters from India, aged patrol boats from Russia and France of the 1980s, we now have the largesse of the UAE, who just happens to have Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s secondary “palatial” residence sitting astride the La Misère hills.

This surge of UAE assistance is relatively new, rising over our horizon about the time the ruler of the UAE took interest in our islands as a secondary home base! The Sheikh’s generosity spilled over into various sectors from IT, public infrastructure to health services, (including medical evacuation of teenage Praslinois bus accident victims). In 2009 alone, US$35.788M poured in (*) which translates into US$426 to each and every Seychellois!!!
What is it that has prompted the UAE to be so generous to us. It cannot only be about a boost to our national development!
We are an island nation of 80K souls, at 57th place on the HDI, with a per capita of over US$8900, and yet we stand 3rd place next to Tanzania (151st HDI, per capita US$550, population 43.7M) and Egypt (101st HDI, per capita US$2758, population 78.7M) in petro-dollar largesse? (*)
There must be something particular in our case that makes us stand out, with a larger begging bowl, far beyond the reaches of poorer countries, more deserving of the UAE’s generosity! Somalia (HDI N/A, per capita US$600, population 9.9M) and Kenya, (147th HDI, per capita US$738, population 39M) our two neighbours confronted with more serious development issues as well as the same plague of piracy, only qualified for US$9.147M and US$1.868M grant aid respectively
Let us not be duped! On the matter of our coastal defence, Al Nayan is probably more interested in, and arranging for, his personal security for when he will spending time in Seychelles, than he is in the host country’s petty matters of crumbling public infrastructures and defence against pirate activities.
I will not be at all surprised to see UAE military / naval personnel in charge of running the new coastal defence installations, with Seychellois dummies up front!

(*) http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/lib.nsf/db900sid/NROI-87D9MQ/$file/UAE%20Foreign%20Aid%202009.pdf?openelement

Bravo Chile

2010-10-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

Who could have stayed unfazed before the live news broadcast and video streaming as the 33 miners of the San Jose mine were rescued 69 days after being entombed ?!
Is there any lesson we can derive from this drama?

On 5.8.2010, a tunnel deep down in the privately-owned-and-operated San Jose mine in the Chilean Atacama desert, 700kms NW of Santiago, collapsed and sealed off 33 miners in the deepest reaches of the mine.
At the time of the accident, the tragedy qualified for a brief mention in the mainstream global news channel as had other similar news stories of mine accidents from Russia through USA to China.
The world moved on and the news cameras panned to other dramas, not particularly moved by the anguish and despair of the families whose lives were torn apart from understanding that their loved ones were entombed 700m under the mountain.
No one had any news of the trapped miners’ fate. First attempts to locate and establish whether or not there were survivors proved futile and posed serious risks to those who had volunteered for a hypothetical rescue.
With the uncertain fate of their 33 countrymen at stake, Chile found the resolve not to turn away from what seemed an impossible task and invited the world community “with any technology and knowledge” to come forward and help. This call from a modern Chile, a country showing it cares for its citizens, was answered!
On the 22.08.2010, the news flashed through that the 33 miners had been located and that they were all alive!
Locating the miners in itself was a notable feat of dogged determination. What was more notable was that there were survivors at all, 17 days after the accident. No one had dared to hope for such a miracle. Nobody had ever survived that long, trapped underground.
With the extraordinary news, came the sobering reality of the survivors’ situation: The miners had only survived to be condemned to their inevitable final entombment.
They were 700m deep under the mountain, with no way out through the hard rock, had managed to survive, in an emergency shelter below the collapsed mine roof, on 48hrs ration for the 17days it took rescue probes to breach their tomb, took stock of their condition and deliver supplies. Rescue attempt required drilling through the rock to reach and extract them from their damp and hot (33°C) prison. No one else has ever managed a rescue from such depth.
Mining has been going on from time immemorial. Mine collapse had both recurringly took place and its due in human lives. It was a fact of mining life! For the San Jose mine survivors, their being found could not dispel their stark reality.

The Chilean Government and the miners’ families remained resolved not be cowed. With the help of specialist drilling and consulting engineers, 3 rescue bore-hole projects got underway to pull the miners to safety. Even before the drilling projects started, Camp Hope had sprung up from the stark, cold and dry desert landscape, the anguish and prayers of the miners’ families driving the engineers and rescuers to the limits of their abilities and that of their machines.
This caught the attention of the media hype circus. As the rescue project bore on, they all flocked to this remote, ancient, accident–prone and hitherto insignificant mine, in the Atacama desert, to turn the glare of their global limelight, more used to candid postures of the glitz and glamour circles, on the humble and modest families. The Hungarian toxic red mud and its individual tragedies were relegated. As were the ongoing uncompromising and unforgiving mire in Afghanistan and Iraq, along with all the other usual captivating global news-headline dramas.
For the media, their ratings and audimats demand that they go beyond the simple matter of seeking and presenting factual news. While the world appreciated the front-row seats of the unfolding drama at the San Jose mine, some of us, however, also despaired over the media cynicism in trying to delve into the swirls of hopes and despair of the miners’ families to lay bare the strengths and frailties of the human spirit in the face of adversity.
Some of us had to make a conscious effort to lock off this media frenzy as an unnecessary distraction from the world-first, real and live-broadcast epic of the rescue mission underway.
I looked more to the relief of fathers, mothers, wives, sons, daughters, friends and partners as the 33 miners who were once taken for dead, were once again each in turn for over 24 hours, given a new birth.
I felt deeply the pride of the mine shift-foreman as he handed over his, brusquely- interrupted and much-prolonged shift, to the Chilean President!
I sought more the sharing of the emotions of each reunion and the wonder of a whole country united behind the single and common purpose of not giving up on their own, however modest and humble.
This is the lesson that I take away from the Chilean, San Jose mine rescue. Not about who is or not a hero, however many heroes there were to lead the rescue mission to a successful conclusion. Not the hype about how the miners and their community will personally and collectively cope!!.
It also brought a chilling thought over how sometimes, misplaced national pride sometimes condemn those we want to save. Had the Russian government been as determined and open as the Chilean, then perhaps the Kursk tragic episode of 10 years ago, could have turned out differently, and the world could have added to its experience and skill in rescuing those imprisoned beyond reach.

Bravo Chile! For giving us an example of fortitude, unity, national pride and common purpose.

Two Tales of An Island

2010-10-06T23:42:00.000-07:00

It was exactly 3 years ago on 04.10.2007, when Mr.Jacquelin Dugasse, then Minister for National Development, formally presented the National Assembly with a preview of what was termed the biggest investment project ever to be undertaken in the country.

There was to be over €400M in Foreign Direct Investment, from the period 2008 to 2012 for the new 780000m² newly reclaimed -at a cost of €13M - Aurore island, itself part of the East Coast Reclamation Phase III project!

€400Million at one scoop!! Who was the genius who managed to pull that rabbit from the white elephant’s hat! For that kind of capital input, the representatives of the nation were suitably impressed to be quite ready to brush aside such persistent issues as the wisdom of the multi-million investment for a reclamation project with unclear Land Use Plan, or the ability of the country to sustain the long term economic debt implications, or again, how much of our national soul had we bargained into the deal!

There were to be an 18-hole golf course, 144 luxury villas, 90 condominiums, a casino, a five-star hotel and a waterfront marina.
All constructions and operations of the facilities on the island were to be undertaken and managed by a company named as Aurore Nouvelle Seychelles,2 tiers-removed from its RSA parent company.
Local businesses were led to understand that they would benefit from the vast range of business opportunities that were to be made available.
1000 jobs were promised for the development phase and some 400 other during its operational phase.
The country was to further benefit from various facilities that the developer was to put in place, such as
· US$10M electricity generator to be provided by Aurore Nouvelle Seychelles,
which was to also supply the nearby Ile Perseverance.
· US$1M desalination plant with links to the national water network,
· Sewerage treatment plant which would also serve Ile Perseverance.
· Construction of the North Mahe Highway from Maison du Peuple through Ile Perseverance and Ile Aurore right up to La Retraite
· Bridge to link Ile Aurore to Anse Etoile.
· An additional US$100M reclamation of 35 hectares to add to the national territory
· 10% of the sale price of condominiums & villas each time there is a new sale and each time there is a change of ownership.

Three years later, same island, different tale! The €400M investment was nothing more than another empty promise. ANS the magician, Aurore the hat, and €400M the rabbit were all part of the bundle that lasted the time it took for us to understand that it was all another show with little to grab onto once the curtains are drawn. We had not even blinked!!

The case of Aurore Island is not an inter-corporate deal that misfired due to the 08-09 global crisis. It is an illustration, if ever another was needed, of how the current political leaders squander the limited means of our small nation, are too eager to chase after windmills in seeking to take their coals out of the fire and have no shame in feeding us hogwash to cover their mismanagement and incompetence!

The President himself came forward on 4.10.2010 to announce (one assumes with some mysterious sense of pride and personal achievement) that “Seychellois investors and small-scale entrepreneurs are to be given the chance to bid” for the revised projects at ile Aurore. “The economic environment is now favourable to encourage small Seychellois businesses and create more wealth in the country……” he said. “ the time has come when Seychelles has enough large hotel schemes to cater for a certain kind of clientele……” he said. “We now have a new strategy …..to give more possibilities for ordinary Seychellois to invest not only in tourism projects but related economic projects and developments.” he said.

GULP!

Three years ago, we did not notice that local entrepreneurs had the investment capability to take on Aurore.
Three years ago, we had not understood that we had enough large hotels
Three years and one harsh economic reform after the Aurore bubble bust, we suddenly turn around to take notice of our own kinfolks!
The questions now are, what Land Use Plan does Aurore have, how far back has the bubble bust put Ile Perseverance, the North Mahe Highway, Anse Etoile –Aurore Island Bridge, etc. and are we capable of pulling a €400M rabbit for it all?

That’s our merry-go-round with defective brakes! The operator is out for lunch!

Making our National Assembly more effective

2010-09-01T05:11:00.000-07:00

Yet another workshop where there will be a lot of polite blathering and where yet another well-intended foreigner will tell us the time from the watches on our wrists!

Once the talking will be over, the trainers gone and their mission reports duly filed, we will revert to the same old Assembly we have known since 1993. The one where the members, in particular from the ruling party, will continue to be rendered honourable by the sole requirement of their constitutional office. The one where there is no honour to be derived from bothering to stand up and speak out in the interest of the constituency. (The demise of Anse Aux Pins MPA Michel over abortion laws is likely still to be one that none will want to threaten their cosy tenures.) The one where the interest of the constituency is equated, sine qua non, to those of the ruling party!
Toeing the party line is, undeniably, not something unique to our National Assembly. What is unique to ours seems to be the quaint habit, transferred or acquired from other arms of government, of making the right noises when there is somebody around to listen and too willing to take our empty words seriously!

Our National Assembly takes itself seriously! As it should! Far from me to say the contrary! However, it can never hope to be effective in anything other than a rubber stamp for the Executive, unless it rids itself of the mind-set that the members represent their party first and foremost above the better interest of their constituencies. In a land where the interests of the constituencies can be easily swayed or bought around election time, there is little hope of the Seychelles National Assembly ever “living up to its constitutional responsibility of assuring more responsive and accountable governance”

Being flippant with our History ?

2010-09-01T05:05:00.000-07:00

On the night of 4th-5th June 1977, a certain James Alix Michel was one of the central figures who helped the Leader of the SPUP (since SPPF, now SPP) to depose the President of the Seychelles’ 1976 SDP-SPUP Coalition Government.
One of the reasons given for the 1977 Coup d’Etat that ushered in 15 years of the SPUP-SPPF One-party rule, was that the Seychelles’ First President was more interested in, and spending too much time, travelling overseas and therefore forsaking the affairs of the country.

Since that terrible night, time has flowed and our collective memories have dimmed out or been blunted by the sheer weight of the unrelenting propaganda from the state-controlled media, including the Daily newspaper, Nation.

In 1976-1977, another James went overseas on presidential visits to continue in the job started some years earlier in his capacity as Chief Minister, to market Seychelles, and attract the interest of financiers and other donors willing to invest and aid in the building of the newly-born nation. Those were the times when our tourism industry got off the ground. Those were the times when the shroud of isolation started to lift, allowing Seychelles to start preparing its place under the sun.

33 years down the road, the Nation now comes out in stout defence of the necessary overseas travels of the current President, the same James Alix Michel of 1977.

We are expected to accept that this time round, the various (and many) overseas visits were “all in the name of Seychelles and our people”, and “have borne fruit. Seychelles’ image abroad has been greatly enhanced, and our country’s success and the harmony that reigns among our people has drawn the admiration of the world more than ever before”

Both Nation and the President flippantly overlooked the historical fact that the 1970s visits of the other James were not for his own personal benefit. They bore fruits from the inflow of foreign capital of which we all ate and upon which the 2nd Republic would build its fortress. The visits did build international partnerships on equal footing that endures to this day. They did spread the reputation of our peaceful harmony, along with what the first President was-and still is-fond of calling “our joie de vivre”, both undoubtedly convincing arguments to secure investments, at negotiation tables.

In 2010 James Alix Michel’s overseas travels seek the same purpose as those of the erstwhile First President. The only difference perhaps lies in that one never sold our land and souls to those with ready cash and undeclared ambitions whilst the other is too willing to accept immediate capital with little qualms over real risks of the nation forfeiting its dignity, independence and sovereignty

In 1977 James Richard Mancham’s overseas travels were enough for others to violently force him out of the Presidential office.
In 2010, James Alix Michel may grow to discover that his overseas visits may turn out to be a growing millstone around his political neck. At the next election, the nation may yet call him to account and pay the price for sacrificing our future development goals and pimping our independence and sovereignty against easy and immediate favours, in particular to indecently petrodollar rich Arab Sheikhs!

Of Harrods and Seychelles Rs.1 Public Land Deals

2010-05-23T01:42:00.000-07:00

Did the Editorial Committee of the Seychelles Nation all attend a special school with the extraordinary merit in dulling its patrons’ sense of discernment between the obvious and the obfuscate?

Our local daily published a ‘contributed’ treatise titled “The lesson from Harrods” over the transfer of that iconic London shopping stop from Al Fayed to a Qatari investment group! For the contributor, “news of the sale was announced as if it were the most natural thing. There were no recriminations. There were no condemnations, even though the property changed hands and passed from a resident to a non-resident”.
It went on to wonder “ if such a transaction in Seychelles would have been greeted with the same intelligence and wisdom.”
Happy in having closed in on an unsuspecting public, the contributor revealed its target : a jibe at our local political opposition. “For recent history has shown that the moment that the government disposes of a property, a plot of land or assets a public outcry ensues. Is it due to ignorance, an issue of race, or simply bad faith? One is sorely tempted to believe that it is a combination of all three.”

The contributor (along with the nation’s Editorial Committee ) missed out on an important point which rendered all the arguments of the article void. The point for public concern is not one of residency or non-residency in so far as the law allows for non – resident ownership.
The point is that Harrods is a private enterprise. That the British Monarchy along with others, high or low on the socio-economic-political ladder, have shopped in there, did not give it, (barring consumer pressure) one bit of say in the matter, in so far as the transfer did not transgress national and international laws.

There is obviously no comparison possible between the transfer of Harrods and the transfer of Seychelles Public assets by the Seychelles Government to private individuals.
The Seychelles Government is bound to account to every Seychellois how it manages each public asset.
No Government can ‘dispose’ of a 120000m² public property for Rs.1 (or another 40,700m² for Rs.60,000) in far-from crystal clear conditions, and not expect a public outcry. Beyond any immediate political capital to be gleaned from denouncing Government’s action over transfer of public assets, the local political opposition is for the moment the sole credible voice against what often appears as the Government’s pimping of our national assets.

Lessons From The Tragedy Of Rodyanne’s And Her Unborn Twin Babies’ Deaths

2010-04-15T00:55:00.000-07:00

21-year old Mrs Rodyanne Elizabeth–Fred, in her 38th week of pregnancy, died at the Seychelles Victoria Hospital’s Intensive Care Unit on New Year’s Day 2010, along with her unborn 2.6kg and 2.7kg twins.
An inquiry into the circumstances of this tragedy was called by the President and the One-Man Inquiry Commission report by former Attorney General A. Fernando, found that the deaths were the direct result of professional to high professional negligence by the personnel of the Ministry of Health.

In going through the report (http://www.statehouse.gov.sc/index.php
?option=com_filecabinet&task=download&cid[0]=60&item=74) I could not help but feel what must have been the utter despair, and painful realisation of Mrs Fred’s family that over 11 days from 20th December 2009, they were helpless spectators as their beloved daughter, sister and wife Rodyanne in obvious distress, and her babies, slipped away from them while under the care of our national health service.

The report obviously had no business to go into the blunted trust of the family, nor into the matter of those other sudden deaths, in or outside the health service, that have gone by unexplained and un-inquired.
As with all investigations, it did however provide pointers to how similar tragedies could be avoided, if we have the heart and will to take decisive action on its findings and recommendations. For Rodyanne’s and her baby twins’ deaths not to have been just a singled out case for a commission of inquiry, we will need to move far away from that presidential office shelf that is the fate of all such inquiries and reports.

Firstly, there is the matter of Responsibility for Negligence.

Professional Negligence having been confirmed, it would be most unprofessional and an invitation to future tragedies, to let this go by without taking firm steps to root it out.
Doctors, Obstetricians, Anaesthetists, Nurses, Midwives, Engineers were found to have singly and collectively erred in doing what we expected their training and experience demand of them, though I am certain none of them deliberately took the option to ignore Mrs Rodyanne’s many and repeated complaints and let her babies slip into death..
This failure was compounded by the lack of clearly-spelt-out patient-diagnostic and follow-through medical intervention procedures, a negligence which can only be laid at the doors of those responsible for running the system.
Both the professionals and the system seem guilty of complacency.
How strong is our will to go into the structural and operational details of our free national health service to cauterise this sore of complacency? How prepared are we to invest in giving ourselves the required resources (personnel, training, equipment, procedural codes, etc) that would clearly point to health service as our top priority over, for example, maintaining a national, armed military force?

Then there is the matter of Respect for Life as embodied in our 1993 Constitutional Bill of Rights. This raises two issues, to do with on the one hand, the rights of the unborn and on the other, on the need for investigation into any Life that ends suddenly.

As regards to the unborn twin babies who died with their mother, chapter 19 of the report could have perhaps restricted itself to establishing their status as persons with the right to life, as provided for under the laws of Seychelles.
It’s all very well to seek to place our laws in the context of international conventions, but how the heck are we to interpret, let alone apply, what goes on in Peru, Hungary, USA, UK, Africa, etc, unless there have been specific provisions incorporating these legal decisions, applications and ideals in our national statutes ?.
That the former Attorney General saw the need to argue lengthily on this simple matter of establishing the Seychellois unborn baby’s right to life would seem to indicate that, along with the founding fathers of the 3rd Republic, we all missed out on an essential definition of the scope and extent of our Constitutional Bill of Rights.
At this time of Constitutional Review, maybe this is yet another blurred area that we must bring into sharper focus to clearly spell out both what we define to be a person as well as when we demand respect for a person’s right to life. In this, we should perhaps allow ourselves to be guided by the intent of the current pregnancy interruption regulations, which indicate the point beyond which any action or omission to prevent the foetus from being born should be no more no less than homicide!

As regards to the Inquiry Commission itself, it seemed to be a glaring demonstration of the saying “missing the forest for the trees”.
The Inquiry Commission into that single tragedy clearly showed that we must not allow any single death to go by without a thorough investigation into the circumstances, including the eventual contributory actions or omissions of persons, leading to it.
The One-Man-Inquiry Commission, whatever its merits, seems to stumble over its own feet in so far as it seeks to impose the perception of an authority it does not really have because we have unfortunately grown to forgo the requirement of formal enquiry into sudden deaths. That’s where the trees hide the forest. The One-man Commission was being made to enquire into one tragedy, singled at the discretion of the President, among several others that went largely unnoticed.!!

At this time of Constitutional Review, we must retrieve the spirit of the Hon. MNA Anthony Derjacques’ recent motion to the National Assembly, for formal, public inquest into each and every sudden death in our land, with an authoritative body created for that specific purpose. This, rather than leaving this prerogative at the pleasure of the President, will be a better way to give substance to the respect for a person’ s life spelled out in our Constitution.
No one may die in our land without us all knowing why and how and without whoever be found responsible for causing the death, being called to account for his actions or omissions, in disregard to our Bill of Rights.

Of Development Policy and Our Best Interest

2010-04-06T08:59:00.001-07:00

I read with interest, the “Open letter from Minister Jacquelin Dugasse to Regar on planning and land issues “ of Seychelles’ Nation’s Letter to the Editor, 06.04.2010.

Perhaps Minister Dugasse was too taken up denouncing Regar’s cavalier reporting, to allow himself a moment of frankness. When has he, or any other of his colleagues of the Cabinet or Chief Executives of the Public Service, ever been forward with truthful and straight-forward responses to queries from the local political opposition on matters of public concern?

Admittedly, Regar, can most often be faulted over its enthusiastic dedication as the mouthpiece of the local political opposition rather than making any pretence at ethical journalism. But then, one has to factor in that Regar functions in a climate of partisan politics in which matters of public concern are managed by the Executive, the Public Service and Government (all in the unyielding hands of the ruling party) on the merit of their political impact. There is too often a marked paucity of information on any matter that could cause mud to be thrown at the Government. Never mind that this is supposed to be a Government of the people, by the people and for the people or that we were promised Accountability, Transparency and Good Governance!

To his credit, on the matter of the Sheikh’s mountain-top development proposal, Minister Dugasse steered clear of exercising the priviledge of his office and ruling on the case under Section 10 of the Town and Country Planning Act (1976).
That, in itself seems to be a loud suggestion that the development proposal was a hot potato which the Sheikh could have done well not to present the Government with.
However, Government had already enjoyed the largesse of the Sheikh and, as with all such cases, pay-back time could not be ignored. Some technician at the Ministry of Lands / Habitat must, at the behest of his Minister, have hatched a Cabinet Paper on the Sheikh’s appeal, arguing the merit of expressing our gratitude to the Sheikh and keeping blessedly quiet on developmental policy issues which had led to refusal of the development proposal by the Town and Country Planning Authority (TCPA).
Cabinet had only to duly stamp its approval and Minister Dugasse could proudly and justly claim the reversal of the TCPA ruling as a collective responsibility taken in our best interest.

In any other country where accountability, transparency and good governance have some meaning, perhaps one could have taken Minister Dugasse to task on how elastic is the interpretation of both the policy regarding skyline development and the country’s best interest.

The first has been around since the 1980’s, well before the sheikh took interest in our islands. Perhaps in a then, justified, if however vain, move to foreclose any further attempt to emulate the USAF “golf-ball” tracking station, built a few years before the current Town and Country Planning Act of 1976, that sat beacon–white atop the La Misere skyline, perhaps to the angst of those who were then deep into their “Yankee Go Home” campaign!

It is not the first time that the wealthy and influential are allowed to mar the islands’ skyline with their private developments. Each case debunks our publicised seriousness in the development policy, which seeks to restrict development to below the skyline and thus conserve as best as possible, the pristine appearance of our islands.

Minister Dugasse may have been too engaged in seeking to trounce Regar, to notice that he was inadvertently revealing that as a people, we cannot be entirely proud of those in whose hand we have entrusted the care of our best national interest.
In the mid 1990’s, therefore at the time land transfers in the Barbarons area were being managed for the Sheikh, the Government also transferred 10 acres (or 40,470m²) of state land in the same general area to the 2nd Former President.
The latter transfer was for a declared Rs.60,000.00 and provoked general, Regar-inspired outrage of the now (in)famous “Rann Sa 10”.

We can now thank Minister Dugasse for indicating that the 2nd former president had indeed benefited from some particular consideration in procuring state land at Rs.1.48/m², while at about the same time, other similar transfers were being made for costs averaging Rs.97/m².
In the 2nd former president’s case, Government seems to have lost out for at least Rs.3.865M!!
In that particular case, Regar did its thing, providing what scant information could be gleaned from public service registers and rachetting public outrage. Nobody from the Public Service came out to provide clarifying information. Those who were entrusted with the business of managing our best interest barely blinked as we lost Rs.3.865M on transfer of our assets.

With so many wealthy and influential groups out there with return favours to call in, the Executive is unlikely to tire of the juggling act between sticking to a coherent development policy and maintaining a semblance of managing our best interest. And we must perhaps be thankful to Regar for keeping them at their stations!

Professionalism In Intercepting Somali Pirates

2010-03-31T01:59:00.000-07:00

The Seychelles ‘Nation’ of 31.03.2010 reported an anti –piracy operation by the EU Naval Force and Seychelles Coast Guard (SCG) in which 6 Seychellois fishermen and 21 Iranians were rescued and 9 Somali pirates captured and an unknown number of pirates lost at sea.

I had mixed feelings going through this piece of news. Whilst congratulations to the SCG seem to be in order, I cannot but feel that we may have inadvertently stepped up the stakes.

It is a good thing that the rescued fishermen from Seychelles and Iran will not have to endure the ordeal of being held for ransom in some pirates’ rear base in Somalia as several other fishermen and ship-crew still being held in captivity.
It is also a good thing that another batch of those irksome Somali wallahs will be made to answer for their actions before a court of law!
It is perhaps also a good thing for the message to come loud and clear for other Somalis lurking out there on the open ocean that little Seychelles is ready and quite capable of taking determined action to safeguard its territorial integrity.

The other untold side to the story seems to give less cause for elation.

Firstly, a week ago, on the 23rd march, a mere 1.5kms NE of Silhouette island, a skiff with 9 persons on board believed to be Somalis, coasted to the “St Christophe” a Seychelles fishing boat. They asked for food and water and were later escorted by the SCG to outside the Seychelles EEZ.
Secondly there is the matter of how, on the 31st March, the SCG managed the interception and engagement of pirates within our territorial waters.
Thirdly, when read in the context of recent reports of unauthorised presence of persons believed to be Somalis well within the Seychelles territorial waters AND our obvious hardened resolve translated into forceful and aggressive intervention, there is yet another cause for great concern that we may be treading the path of a delicate and high-stakes escalation.

Far from me to begrudge the SCG any claim they would want to make, or that they would see laid at their feet, for professionalism.
This said, it seems to me that professionalism was a tad lacking in some aspects of the reported actions of 23rd and 31st March.

A skiff with 9 persons believed to be foreign nationals, is intercepted in the country.
The skiff was not unlike the type usually used by Somali pirates. However, as the occupants appeared inoffensive, they were given food and water and escorted outside the EEZ.
The management of this interception seems to question the SCG’s professionalism.
1. The skiff’s occupants did not have entry clearance into Seychelles. There are laws that direct how the matter must be managed.
2. Assuming that the occupants were only fishermen from a neighbouring country, who had drifted close to our shores, there are also laws that direct how the case must be managed.
Humanitarian considerations, in particular those close to the hearts of an island nation with its own fishing community that frequently drifts out into the open ocean, dictate further that whoever is saved from aimless drifting, be given proper care and eventually repatriated to their own country.
(We have several instances of our local fishermen drifting out into the open sea, some never to return. In the mid 1980s, two Seychellois from the then military-controlled island of Coetivy, on a fishing trip, spent several weeks adrift when the engine of their 3-m fibre-glass, open fishing boat broke down. They eventually landed 1500kms away, on the East coast of Somalia, were taken into custody (they were then wearing military fatigues and suspected of being some local rebels) but eventually released into the care of Humanitarian Agencies and repatriated home.)

Escorting the skiff and its occupants outside the EEZ seems to indicate that the SCG did not consider the matter to have been one of innocent-drifting fishermen. Which begs the question why the matter was not then treated, at the least, as illegal entry!

The operation of 31.03, aided by an EU maritime patrol plane, followed a reported pirates’ attack and capture of a local fishing boat, the “Galaté”, with its crew of 6 nationals, in the middle of night some 90kms SE of Mahe. That’s an open stretch of ocean of the southern plateau and fishing banks, approximately 210kms N of Coétivy Island and the Fortune Fishing Banks, 115kms NE of Platte Island and a mere 75km SSE of the exclusive five-star Fregate Island resort.

The SCG received orders to intercept the dhow, which then had a known crew of pirates and total of 27 hostages, the latter of whom were the 6 Seychellois fishermen freshly captured. In the ensuing exchange of fire, the pirates’ mother ship was disabled, caught fire and was abandoned by all. The SCG picked all 36 occupants from the sea with emergency medical evacuation of 1 Iranian with gunshot wounds.

I can understand and even support the SCG’s determined resolve to deprive the Somali pirates the freedom to move and operate in our waters. I recognise that one cannot pretend to a hardened resolve unless one is ready to be aggressive in engaging a known adversary.
However I cannot but feel that this must be pursued with clear rules of engagement that take into priority consideration both the lives and safety of hostages and the potential of risk escalating factors
In both these latter regards, I would tend to lean towards dubious show of professionalism by the SCG, notwithstanding a certain sense of satisfaction that this time round, the pirates were thwarted.
My fear is that our determined resolve will have raised the stakes for the inevitable future encounter, the outcome of which, should the SCG go in guns blazing, may not be as welcome.
Indications are that the pirates, once antagonised, seem bent on vengeful retaliation, as the reported attack by a pirates’ mother ship and 2 skiffs on the SCG’s “Topaz”, returning to base from the rescue mission, would tend to suggest, notwithstanding that the authorities seem quite dismissive of this. The sinking of the mother ship and a skiff, presumably with the loss of all onboard, following quickly in the wake of the previous rescue mission, while it will have signalled our hardened resolve to be tough, may also have sharpened the other side’s need for vengeance.

In the face of yet again clear indications of the pirates’ capacity to be marauding undeterred in close to proximity to unprotected islands and population, I feel cause for increasing concern that those whom we will seek to rescue in future, or who will be in the forefront of the fight against the pirates, may very well pay the highest price.

Professionalism also demands that this is avoided at all costs!

With Arab Money, Paradise will be turned into the Prostitute of the Indian Ocean

2010-02-18T04:31:00.000-08:00

In 2008, for a symbolic SCRs.1.00 (then US$0.15, today US$0.08) the Seychelles Government transferred a large chunk of state land at La Misere to an Arab Sheik
When news of the transfer reached the public, it caused some outcry, with the local political opposition vocally denouncing another sign of what was deemed the Seychelles Government’s irresponsible management of national assets.
In response to the protests, the Seychelles Government, in the person of Minister Joel Morgan, informed that over and above the Government’s gratitude towards the considerable assistance Seychelles had benefited from the magnanimous Arab Sheikh in question, the land was deemed not suitable for development, ergo, its symbolic transfer value.
Barely a year after the Arab Sheikh became owner of part of the central highlands of Mahé, the nation was astounded to see one of the most extensive private residential development underway on land that was supposedly unsuitable for development.
Indications are that the palatial development has been undertaken contrary to Town and Country Planning Act (1976), which usually do not permit any construction to mar the national skyline (though this is not specifically stipulated in the Act!) (The former US tracking station’s characteristic white domes atop the mountains for over 30 years from the 1960s, was well before the Town and Country Planning Act. It was also a military project -usually exempted from city planning regulations - and the result of negotiations between the US military and the British colonial administration.)
There seems to have also been further concessions granted to the developer to import his reportedly 700-strong team of foreign nationals for the construction. Plus reported diplomatic priviledges allowing direct and duty free-imports for materials.

I consider it reasonable for the political opposition and others to have voiced outrage over this matter.

Because I also feel outraged.!

The outrage is not over an Arab Sheikh owning property in Seychelles and building his palace!

It is over the blatant irresponsibility of a government who, yet again, surrenders a piece of national territory to a foreign national for next to nothing (unless one were to factor in the favours and largesse received, and that may or not be related to the land transfer)
It is over the re-enactment of the same scenario (bar the transfer cost)of rich foreigners rushing in with their petro-dollars, lapping up parts of our limited national territory and driving real estate cost through the ceiling, effectively relegating us, and our modest desire to one day own a piece of land, to the place of dreams!
It is over the blatant arrogance of the particular Arab Sheikh developer to use his wealth, power and influence over our vapid local leaders, to put himself above the law and contemptuously shove aside our country’s development regulations.
It is over reports that the development site is de facto foreign territory to which our national law enforcement agencies may not even access to investigate and address recent reports of serious environmental pollution emanating from the development site.
It is over the all-too obvious signs that our government is quietly, and perhaps un-intentionally, turning Seychelles into the classiest prostitute of the Indian Ocean, pimping parts of our country to those of the richest, most influential foreigners who crave to own a piece of what we used to call paradise.
It is over the increasing sense of unease that my pride in living in and owning a piece of that paradise will, in the not too distant future, be turned into shame for being no less than part of the chattel that used to be Seychelles!
It is all the more galling in being totally unable to do anything to correct the outrage!

The risks are REAL

2010-02-10T00:06:00.000-08:00

For once, The Independent article of 08.02 (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/how-the-seychelles-became-a-pirates-paradise-1892279.html) read like a fairly well-balanced appraisal of the potential risks to the Seychelles economic mainstays from pirates’ activity within or in proximity to Seychelles’ EEZ.

Minister Morgan’s refutal published by The Nation of 10.02 (http://www.nation.sc/) seems to focus on the one part of The Independent’s article that touched risks to the tourism industry. This rebuttal may be quite acceptable in terms of the expected official response to re-assure the sensitive (European)market.
While we are certainly not a “pirates’ paradise”, it would however be a grave mistake to brush off Daniel Howden’s “nightmare scenario ..(of) pirates washing up on one of the exclusive beaches waving guns at free-spending tourists” .

Seychelles’ territorial integrity does indeed stretch to small, low-lying remote islands sprinkled over a vast expanse of open sea. Some of these provide exclusive resort facilities to the higher end of the tourism market. Their remoteness, clientele and the proven capability of pirates to operate within range, do mark them as potential targets!

It is perhaps because of our having understood the risks that troops have been stationed on some of these islands!
Without ceding to paranoia, perhaps it would be wise to ensure reliable and immediate communication between our remote islands and Mahe. Perhaps we should also revise the deployment of the security forces in order to allow bases in the outer island groups, as both a visible deterrence as well as for rapid deployment, immediate and effective intervention.

This “nightmare scenario” of our sovereignty being compromised is not new. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, in the face of the humanitarian and political catastrophes that were hitting Mozambique, Madagascar and the Comoros, there were one or two who quietly voiced concern on whether or not we were equipped and ready to manage a potential tide of refugees that could unlawfully be landed on our remotest islands. Fortunately we were never put to the test.
And then Somalia broke down and Western Naval Security Forces inadvertently pushed Somali pirates off the Gulf of Aden into the South West Indian Ocean!

La Plaine St Andre : A piece of Seychelles Cultural Heritage askew ?

2010-02-09T00:54:00.001-08:00

Lest we forget:
The object of what was presented in the “Nation” of 09.02.2010 as part of our national heritage should not only be the buildings and vestiges of what was once the property of Grand Blanc Jean-François Marie Jorre de Saint Jorre.
It must also be a recall of what we now know to have been the sufferings and indignities visited upon the flesh and souls of those who were deemed simpler and humbler, torn from their ancestral lands and forced to serve the needs of their Grand Blanc master in the person of Mr Jorre de St Jorre. True, there were then, others like him lording it in our land: Sauveur Thomas Audibert, Guichard, Fournier, Antoine Barthélémy Hodoul, Jean François Hodoul, (père et fils) Julien Antoine Hodoul, Antoine Maurel, Pierre Hangard, Jean Marie Le Beuze, Charles Blaise Savy, Pierre Fournier Louis d’Offay de Rieux, Andre Nageon de l’Estang, Landrous, Maximilien Morel, Pierre Gontier, and Jean Pierre Langlois, and others, bourgeois, vulnerable nobles, demobilised military or adventurers, the whole bag of them, who had all left their troubled country (from St Malo, Antibes, Morbihan, Yonne, La Ciotat and Ile de France or Ile Bourbon,) and fortunes in search of better prospects, and in the process, bestowed upon themselves the merit of being more cultured and civilised.
That the nation must preserve whatever vestige that has survived through the ages as an enduring silent testimony of the past, is a good thing. However, in order for us not to be a modern and accommodating accomplice in perpetuating the ignominy of our humbler ancestors being cast aside, unworthy of homage and remembrance, we must guard against modern economic projects that divert focus to only the visible signs that allow immediate recall of the prestige and vibrant fortunes and glory of a certain era, the stuff that commercial promoters – and perhaps influence from the circle of contemporary descendants of the Grand Blanc – would be more comfortable with as an income generating tourist trap.
We must not dismiss further into the mists of time and our collective conscience, the memories of what our enslaved forebears had to endure to shore up the prestige and glory of the Grand Blanc. Should we but dig into the foundations of the La Plaine St Andre Estate, we would perhaps discover that these lay upon the silent bones of those whom history never bothered to give a name: The Mingas, Bristols, Moumous, Lajoies, Octobres, Samedis, Kissombees, Acikciris, Poonelewas, Amices, Lesperances, and so many others whose memories need to be stirred from our national archives where they lie silent and dusty.

Ironical it is indeed, that in the name of Cultural Heritage, we have since the 1980s been focussing so much national attention to restoring the glory of an edifice that reeks of Grand Blanc arrogance and oppression, the same stuff that some prominent local politician with a gift of the gab used to bludgeon us with as the embodiment of evil and the supreme obstacle along the path to national freedom.
The modern Savys now have beyond life-time lease of Ste Anne, the same land that in early 19th century, their Grand Blanc ancestor Charles Dorothé Savy worked his 100 or so slaves before the abolition of slavery.
The Hodouls have their La Ciotat. The Nageon de l’Estang, d’Offay de Rieux, Gonthier, Maurel, etc, all have had their fair share of prominence in the contemporary social, economic and political life of the nation. Will La Plaine St Andre be yet another reminder that history can afford to frolic only around the memories and vestiges of the rich, powerful and influential?

Go Eddy! GO

2010-02-09T00:52:00.000-08:00

Modest and humble but moving on with dogged determination, Eddy Maillet makes us all proud.
The truth and sacrifices of his personal and private journey from humble Sports Assistant (Physical Education Instructor) with the National Youth Service and defender in his district amateur football team in the 1980’s to FIFA 2010 World Cup Referee is one that perhaps Eddy will –must- one day tell.
Whether or not Eddy gets to be the Man In Black on the RSA World Cup pitch is secondary to what he is now for us all and to football in our islands. He is a beacon that has been steady and uncompromising, and unlike some of us, his ambition and drive never an object for the public limelight until the goal is achieved.
Congratulations Eddy! I share with you and your family the pride and glory of your moment!

The 'Nation' Did it Again

2009-11-20T00:23:00.000-08:00

In a recent article, the national daily lambasted the local political opposition for playing politics with Air Seychelles’ reported financial difficulties. The article was quite a gem, as far as illustrating the political independence of the venerable national paper.
As if not satisfied in having soundly slammed the opposition into silence, it went into another snide side attack in today’s Business Column:
“Air Seychelles (HM) was turned into a political football recently and kicked around after it applied for a loan from the government at a time when the world is in deep economic recession”

(In passing, today’s article had the usual bit to lull us into believing that when faced with financial difficulties, the Management Board of other airline companies have some form of knee-jerk reaction and go for “redundancies and other cost-cutting measures”, unlike what the CEO and the Management Board of our proud national carrier. Quite forgetting that in our case, amongst other considerations, we have a Government budget to run to.)

The article also mentioned what prompted Air Seychelles’ financial difficulties “during the last two financial years” and the request for the November 2009 SCRs.30M bail-out were the “damage to one of its aircraft in Paris and record fuel prices.”

Be that as it may!

Enough has been said about the 2008-09 yo-yoing fuel prices. As for the damage to the aircraft, I had the chance to follow a detailed TV documentary on the repairs to the Boeing 767-300 (Vallée de Mai). The damage was caused in December 2007,when the aircraft was being ground-handled at Paris – Roissy Charles de Gaulle for its scheduled Paris –Mahe flight!. The aircraft had to undergo a pressure dome replacement, a major and costly undertaking by any standards. It was back in service in March 2008.

In such matters, isn’t there some insurance coverage that butts in, same as our more down- to- earth 3rd party risk vehicle insurance? The real cost arising from that incident could not have been of such horrendous magnitude as to, by itself, cause the airline to be in dire need of fresh capital.

Indeed, in his 2007-2008 report, the CEO himself declared that despite “jet fuel reaching hitherto unseen price levels, …… many airlines worldwide( having) a rough ride, the compounding (.. ).. problem” of the damage to the Boeing 767-300 at Paris CDG, the national carrier “managed to post a profit – it was in fact our tenth consecutive profitable year, albeit with a relatively small profit of €604,000"(*)

Does this not suggest that the Nation, rather than choosing to enter the arena of political discourse, should look into other areas, for the real reasons and justifications underlying the financial dire straits of the National Airline?
It just cannot be about that too oft-whipped fuel donkey! Just as it could not have been only about the pressure dome replacement!

Perhaps the local political opposition has a case in pointing a questioning finger at the wisdom of management policies and investment plans!

(*)(www.airseychelles.com/flightinfo/AirSeyAnnReport07-08)

Why Are We Even Here?

2009-11-04T02:23:00.000-08:00

What are we, but remnants of stardust stranded on a ball of rock, itself a left over from some stellar cataclysm, offering us fragile refuge on its thin crust laid atop a seething cauldron?
What is our world, but the delicate and unfathomable balancing of forces between stellar and cosmic energies, that keeps our spinning ball of rock in its place around our nearest star within a spinning galaxy of stars, along other spinning galaxies; that keep us firmly rooted on our spinning world; provides and maintains in place, the thin layer of atmosphere and the surface and underground waters, so vital to our continued existence?
The sheer wonder of our tenuous existence does give us cause to ponder!
We have looked beyond ourselves into the dark and blue of space from which we draw the strength of our everyday existence since time immemorial. As we did and continue to do, we hardly give thought to the mix of solid, liquid and gaseous matter forming the orb on which we stand and that is among the smallest of objects spinning through, and kept in, space by secret forces and energies, the understanding of which, despite the millennia of our historical evolution, remained at the extreme limits of our understanding until a few centuries ago. Contemporary religious communities, along with scientists and philosophers, are still trying to decipher these secrets, perhaps waiting for an evolution in human awareness, intelligence and technologies for a breakthrough.!
Other than the sparkle of stars and other large celestial objects, some of us see nothing beyond the limitless and undefined horizon above our heads than stark emptiness of a void lifeless but for the sighs and echoes of our dreams.
To some are revealed a significance of our destiny.
There are those who delve into arcane sciences and dabble in mysticism to pluck at the strings of the unseen energies and vibrations from within living and dead stars, swirling galaxies, cosmic dust and orbiting planets, seeking an insight into the substance of our earthly present and future existence.
Others, perhaps overwhelmed by the magnitude of our swirling solitude in the void of space, readily surrender to, and take spiritual sustenance from, the beauty, philosophy, power and will of a Design and Intelligence far beyond our comprehension, but that expresses Itself through every worldly living and lifeless manifestation.
How did humanity reach the point where it endowed stars and remnants of stars, along with wavelengths of energy coursing and shaping the universe, with the power and intelligent purpose behind our existence?
Is there in us all, some remnant of a creative energy linking us to the stars that causes this universal culture of seeking the source and design of the power behind existence? Or is this the result of our thirst for the elusive answer to the fundamental questions we have always asked ourselves: Why do we exist and seem to be alone in the vastness of the universe?
How reasonable can it be for intelligent, highly educated and respected persons who hold offices we deem among the most prestigious on our planet, to espouse and propagate a faith in dimensions of an eternal Afterlife beyond our worldly existence, under the control of the duality of positive and negative forces, and to which our non-physical essence are bound?
Some say it is a matter of faith, that insubstantial and most private belief we share amongst ourselves, that demands we seek to be elevated and freed, from the prison of our temporal, matter-dictated existence, to embrace the very essence of life as pure, eternal energy. A belief that this can be achieved through worshiping anything from the power and energy of our nearest sun, through those expressed during storms, to the wind, beasts, lava-spitting mountains, on to an imagined omnipotent, all-seeing all-knowing Ruler of a Kingdom in the sky!
Be that as it may.
Life is real. It is a spark borne, at least on our as yet solitary terrestrial world, from the vibration and fusion of matter and energy which creates the unique auto-engineered fire that burns, grows and develops to be self-generating before being extinguished by a pre-determined, built-in code or by circumstance and accidents of existence.
It exists just as much as the air we breathe, the earth, waters and fires that sustain it. It exists as much in the physical aspects that the limits of our human senses can perceive, through sight, touch, taste, feel and hearing, as it does in our awareness of its lesser decipherable forms, energies and power, at the limits of our perception range.
Our thoughts, dreams, ambitions, desires, fears, faith and will may well be intangibles, but to each of us, their existence is as much real as each of us are ourselves. They remain forever locked in each of us and cannot survive beyond our own existence, other than in the replication of ourselves that others may have formed.
They remain the most profoundly private and personal dimensions of all our existence.
It seems irrational to suggest otherwise.
Just as it seems irrational to suggest an engineering intelligence behind the forms and expression of Life, so it is to dispel the notion that Life cannot exist beyond the reach of our sciences and awareness.
One day perhaps, our Male-Female, Ying-Yang, Positive-Negative dualities may very well lead us to discover and understand that space beyond earth is the abode neither of God nor Devil, but of Life itself, neither Good nor Bad, but what we make of it. Perhaps of Life in an infinite variety, of a range, scope and dimension, well beyond the grasp of our current state of evolved awareness

“Is Seychelles turning a blind eye to pirates?” What Rot!!

2009-10-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Seychelles Nation of 29.10.2009 featured an article by which “the government has denied claims in a British newspaper that Seychelles has become “popular with pirates”…. and has reached a deal with them on their activities. The claims were made in The Independent yesterday in an article linked to the disappearance of a yacht with two British sailors on board after it left Seychelles last Thursday.” The article of The Independent claimed that the Seychelles have “deals with the pirates which would allow them to operate as long as they do not affect the interests of the Seychelles”.

This was troubling news indeed, to hear that the Government of my beloved country would be courting the very criminals who, since 2008, are posing a serious threat to our sovereignty, security and the two principal pillars of our economy- Fishing and Tourism!

Having read both the original article from ‘The Independent” (http://www independent.co.uk /news/ world/africa/is-seychelles-turning-a-blind-eye-to-pirates-1810496.html ) of 28.10.2009 and the denial of “The Nation”, (http://www.nation.sc/) and having some spare time on my hands, after commenting on the article on “The Independent’s” website, I made a quick research to find out more behind the report of The Independent’s Defence Correspondent, Kim Sengupta.

First and foremost, it would seem to me that Kim Sengupta was essentially commenting on the reports “from security companies” to the effect “that the government of the Seychelles has done deals with the pirates which would allow them to operate as long as they do not affect the interests of the Seychelles”

Sengupta’s article referred to “Iderat Maritime, a leading shipping security company which lists Major-General Julian Thompson, the former commander of the Royal Marines, as one of its directors, (stating) that the government (of Seychelles) has probably reached an "understanding" with the pirates. Information from within Somalia appears to confirm this. ……..Christopher Ledger, vice-chairman of Iderat Maritime, said: "These reports have been quite persistent and need to be looked at. We are not saying that the abduction of [Paul and Rachel Chandler, the British couple who were kidnapped by Somali pirates last week] had anything to do with any such links."

Sengupta’s article does mention the Seychelles’ Government denials of any deals with, and its efforts in taking action against, pirates, as well as presenting statements from Mr. Joel Morgan - Seychelles Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Transport (also the official head of the Seychelles Committee to coordinate the national response to piracy, after the capture by Somali pirates of 10 Seychellois in two separate 2009 incidents on boats within Seychelles’ territorial waters) to the effect that "the Seychelles Peoples' Defence Force will act as a deterrence force to any approaching pirate vessels, and our forces will complement the Seychelles and international naval forces in the region. We have 1.4 million square miles of ocean and for this reason it is a greater challenge to guarantee the security of our waters alone."

To its credit, the article also added that “the most direct sign of Western involvement is the stationing of the 36ft MQ-9 Reaper drones, the size of jets. The aircraft are fitted with infrared, laser and radar targeting, can fly up to 16 hours and are capable of carrying a dozen guided bombs and missiles”

But the seed of doubt was by then already sown. The damage was then already done.

In my view, Kim Sengupta cannot pretend to be much of a Defence Correspondent to remain satisfied with such outrageous and unverified claims, so deeply wounding to the pride and integrity of a nation caught in a David and Goliath battle to secure its sovereignty and protect the lifeblood of its economy.

History is full of occasions where “La Raison d’Etat” demanded of Rulers and Governments that they enter into secret agreements, sometimes with their known and worst enemies, in order to secure some national short-term goal.

Official denial of an uncovered and indelicate national misdeed, is also not an alien component of contemporary diplomacy.

Sengupta, as a journalist, must know these and must have surely intended the article of ‘The Independent’ to be more than a ripple in that pond of public opinion over the reported capture by Somali pirates of the British couple, Paul and Rachel Chandler, aboard their private yacht, on 23rd October, on their way to Tanzania from Seychelles.

Nothing in the article suggested, however, an invitation to investigate both the claims of underhand deals and the integrity of Iderat Maritime and its motivation to come out with such claims.

Sengupta must also know that the new piracy scourge off the coast of Somalia has moved, since 2008, from the horn of Africa to the western corner of the Indian Ocean, at the northern mouth of the Mozambique Channel, preying on the India-Asia-South Africa and Red Sea, Arabian sea- bound shipping.

World opinion has been formed to the idea that the prevailing chaos in what is said to be lawless Somalia, combined with impoverished fishermen along the Somali coast, who are disgruntled over foreign unauthorised fishing within the Somali territorial waters, rag-tag rebels and other armed bandits, to induce the coastal population to turn to the more lucrative and immediate rewards from piracy on undefended shipping off their coast.

We are expected to understand that some Somali, tired of squatting in the dust and squalor of endemic poverty, suddenly woke up one day to throw off their blood-soaked coats of lawlessness and decided to be smarter and prey on International Shipping! Without some other hand quietly pushing them along and gathering its share of the rich booty from ransoms!??

From 2005 to 2007, there were only some 6 reported attacks.
Since 2008, there have been 116 reported attacks on ships from some 50 different countries, in the area of the West Indian Ocean, attributed to Somali pirates.
At least 100 of these attacks were successful. These have been potentially life-threatening to some 5,700 crew and passengers of the ships targeted.
Indeed, 4 crew members and 19 pirates have died in separate incidents directly resulting from pirates’ attack on shipping since 2008.
The attacks have also been rewarding, from the view of the pirates, having allowed them to reap over US$23M in paid ransom for ship and crew / passengers from at least 17 of the 100 successful attacks. (Discounting the US$3M MV Sirius Star ransom money lost when the 5 pirates drowned with their loot!).

This is, by all standards, big money with an appeal powerful enough to roust the nearest impoverished fisherman–cum-rebel-cum bandit to turn away from internecine squabbles and futures without promise. It is also enough money to allow those operating behind the scenes to source and procure the necessary technology, arms and other tools and have their minions more effectively track and intercept shipping on the open sea.

The situation is rendered more galling when the world soon understood that national and international statutes are largely ineffective to legally deal with the pirates.
Rule-of-law nations have to be resigned before a bunch of bandits who openly flaunt international laws and laugh in the face of their eventual captors and prosecutors, certain in the knowledge that a law-abiding nation is absolutely hog-tied by its own laws against taking any meaningful punitive legal actions against them.
Rules of Engagement of the International Coalition Task Force and the safety of hostages preclude most military actions against pirates who proceed with their captured ships and crews right before the eyes and under the guns of the naval force set to intercept them!

To date, only a sprinkling of the at least 98 pirates captured have been successfully prosecuted, when Kenya sentenced 10 pirates to 7 years’ sentences over the January 2006 attack on the dhow Safina al Bisarat and the intervention of USS Winston Churchill. Most of the others are released after capture, as underlined over the MV Front Ardenne incident of 19th April 2009 when NATO (Canada & US) warships intercepted pirates, boarded their boats, questioned and released them. "The pirates' release underscores the difficulties navies have in fighting rampant piracy off the coast of lawless Somalia. Most of the time foreign navies simply disarm and release the pirates they catch due to legal complications and logistical difficulties in transporting pirates and witnesses to court" (source:Yahoo.Com news AP of 19.04.09)

The demands of International Trade and national economies requiring free and secure passage along a strategic shipping route compelled governments affected by this new threat to form an international force of armed naval patrols and surveillance of the zone off the Horn of Africa.

The Combined Task Force 150 of August 2008 established its Maritime Security Patrol Area in the strategic Gulf of Aden, followed by the UN resolution 1838 of 6.10.2008 authorising the use of military force against the pirates.
Feeling the heat from the international navies, the pirates shifted the predatory range away from the Gulf of Aden to the northern mouth of the Mozambique Channel.

Seychelles is a small country comprising some 115 islands of cumulated 450km², just off the normal Mozambique Channel shipping routes. Its territorial waters cover an expanse of ocean some 2.2million km², stretched roughly over 1400kms from its northernmost Bird and Denis islands to its south-westernmost Aldabra Atoll. Most of the islands are remote from the main island of Mahe. The nearest Amirantes group to the South West is at 250km across open sea.

When the pirates shifted their predation away from the international naval patrols in the Gulf of Aden, Seychelles found itself caught unprepared, with pirates marauding on its very doorstep and sometimes moving right inside its house with absolute impunity.

Clearly, the pirates pose a significant threat to Seychelles
The 25th March and 1st April capture, well into our territorial waters, of the Serenity and the Indian Explorer, with a combined 10 Seychellois crew, was closely followed by the 13th and 26th April 2009-thwarted attacks on the French purse seiner Le Drennec and the Italian cruise ship MsC Melody.

The International Coalition Task Force seemed to have quickly appreciated the new shift of pirates’ activity and new risks to Seychelles. From the mid 2009, in part from Seychelles’- driven efforts to harness international help to safeguard its national integrity, there has been intense co-operation between the International Coalition Task Force and the Seychelles authorities.

It is in this context that a new and closer co-operation came into being between the Seychelles Coast Guard and the International Coalition Task Force, to beef up the country’s coast guard’s response and interception capability as well as establishing aerial and surface surveillance base from the main island of Mahe; that in mid-April 09, France offered a falcon-50 from its navy to help in anti-piracy surveillance of the Seychelles territorial waters; that Seychelles accepted armed French military personnel on French purse seiners operating from Victoria (Mahe) and is receptive to similar arrangements with regard to Spanish purse Seiners, should the Spanish Government grant such approval; that the USA is stationing the 36ft MQ-9 Reaper drones in the Seychelles; and that the EU is investing to bolster the nations’ legal infrastructure to effectively secure conviction, after due, and internationally recognised and accepted process, of pirates arrested within Seychelles’ territorial waters.
Little Seychelles would be hard put indeed, to hoodwink the intelligence services of its powerful partners, in receiving their assistance to secure its sovereignty against piracy while at the same time engaging in secret deals with the very pirates its partners are helping it against!

It may not be entirely unreasonable to question the manner in which the Seychelles arranged the release of 23 persons, allegedly from Somalia, arrested on open seas, by the International Coalition Task Force in mid 2009, on strong suspicion of piracy.
After some weeks’ detention in Seychelles and initiation of prosecution formalities, the office of the Seychelles’ Attorney General, concluded that in the absence of irrefutable evidence to support the charges, they had a weak case to prosecute and secure conviction. There was then, little other choice but to release the 23 accused.
While Seychelles was initiating the prosecution of the 23 accused, the mind of the nation was turned more towards the plight of our 10 compatriots being held hostage in Somalia since April 2009 and the reported negotiations, under the direct involvement of Minister Joel Morgan, underway with the pirates for their release.

All things comparable, to have 10 Seychellois out of a population of 80000 held hostage would be like having 7,639 British citizens (UK population estimate July 2009 61,113,205 -https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/uk.html – People) under Somali pirates’ control. For any self-respecting nation, this is an intolerable situation!!
Given that the whole country was behind the government for the negotiated safe return of our compatriots home, it would have been political suicide for the Seychelles authorities to opt for secret deals with the pirates that could potentially jeopardise the release of our compatriots, compromise both our standing before our international partners as well as our capability in handling future situations in this volatile counter-piracy arena!

For those of us not privy to the details of what have been reported as sensitive negotiations, we may raise our eyebrows at what seems to be Minister Morgan’s amateurish, handling of the matter, if however forgivable given that our country has never had to be involved in such delicate and potentially dangerous negotiations.

In hindsight, perhaps it would have been better if the Seychelles’ authorities had allowed the negotiations and subsequent handing – over of both pirates and our compatriots, by internationally recognised professional negotiators and through third party humanitarian organisations. In this way, at least, there would have been little cause for the reported 29th August spat with the Puntland authorities over the release of pirates and hostages, and much less accusations of ill-disguised swap of pirates against hostages, fuelling suspicion of secret ransoms and underhand deals!

These then are the facts of piracy off the Seychelles.
These then are what Kim Sengupta missed to point out! Perhaps from ignorance! Perhaps from a lack of professionalism! Perhaps from an overdose of cheap journalism!

A small island nation which has its economy in a perhaps unhealthy dependence on tourism from mostly Western European countries, suddenly finds its name ingloriously bandied along by the “Western” media, in an unsavoury association with the greatest part of each pirates’ attack on shipping in the Western Indian Ocean, particularly since the start of the current 2009-2010 favourable monsoon season.

“The impression of the Seychelles is of idyllic tropical islands, untouched by the troubles of a turbulent region, and highly popular with upmarket Western tourists.” as Kim Sengupta rightly summarised Seychelles, is now indelibly and quite undeservedly, linked, at least in the subliminal awareness of the global tourism market, to piracy and risk.!

Kim Segupta, perhaps unknowingly, merely chose to drive in the fire – hardened spit of unverified and unproven underhanded deals of the Seychelles Government with the pirates, with the suggestion that our government is therefore carelessly heightening the risk! This in itself is a sin against the people of Seychelles that will require a considerable effort to be forgiven!

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

2009-07-20T04:20:00.000-07:00

“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!

When Will We Ever Learn?

2009-07-06T00:31:00.000-07:00

The Seychelles Nation of Saturday 4th July ran this comment:
“Our world partners are telling us we nearly hit the bottom, but we realised in time and changed course accordingly. Now we are heading back upwards, this time towards a higher level where we belong…” Not satisfied with this dubious inspiration, the journalist (sic) continued “Now that the international community and our President are committed and are keen to help push the country further, the question is: are we?”

For a moment, I was dumbfounded! I mean, is this for real? One would expect of the Nation's columnist to at least try and maintain a semblance that he did not just walk straight from kindergarden to be another sycophant!

For years before November 2008, all local stakeholders from politicians and business to the simple man-of-the-street, had cause to express their concerns over the signs of worsening national economy. Several local voices were raised, columns were printed in local media, calling for an end to, at least by public statements and other declarations by leaders of Government, of the ostrich policy, with regard to management of the national economy..
As late as November 2006, the leader of the local political opposition, in his response to the 2007 budget, had this to say: “Minis i dir ki letan dimoun i demann li ki mannyer lekonomi i ete, i dir tou i ok. Eski i war bann lalinny dimoun ki pe esper $400 dolar depi gran maten? Bann lalinny pour dibwa, siman ek blok? Bann mank liv ek lezot materyo dan lekol, latizann dan lopital? Standard ek Poor’ in donn nou en ‘B’ rating, e dapre Minis sa in kapab fer nou etabli en Bond 9.125 % pour bann envestiser etranze. Me akoz ki nou, Seselwa, nou ganny preski zero lentere lo nou seving isi”

The government systematically dismissed the concerns over the national economy, raised by children of the land, as cheap politics from those unsympathetic to the economic and other policies of the, then SPPF government.
Lies, they said!
Our economy is sound, they said!
Any one who says differently seeks only to spread confusion among our people, they said!
Those in control kept their course, deliberately ignoring the menacing reefs until the last quarter of 2008. That was the time when voices from outside, presumably ‘our world partners’ finally got through the message that our local leaders had been ignoring for so long.
“We nearly hit bottom”! they now admit!

Sadly, this is too often the course local leaders and policy-makers follow. We know of our difficulties, from the level of service in tourism establishments to our inability to honour national loans repayment schedules. We always seem to ignore appeals for acknowledgement and redress when these come from the mouths of our children. But the moment a foreigner comes in whispering in our ears, we fall over ourselves trying to do that which we had failed to do! In short, we suffer from needing a foreign-expert- consultant-ambassador to tell us the time from the watch we carry on our wrist!

Another title, perhaps closer to the reality of life in our country could have been: "had we listened and heeded when our people spoke, we would have realised earlier that we were at the bottom and would have changed course!"

The tragedies of Flights AA 903, AA 587 and AF 447

2009-06-12T04:10:00.000-07:00

I have no business taking part in the speculation furore over the probable causes of the crash of AF447. The experts will study the bits and pieces recovered both from the wreck site as well as from the automated messages and hopefully, succeed in providing the answers that victims’ families, passengers and airline operators want.
They may perhaps consider going through the Aircraft's design and specifications, with particular attention to the incidents of flights American Airlines 903 of 12th May 1997, 587 of 12th November 2001 and see if these could match up with that of AF 447 of 31st May 2009. That’s where I could throw in my 2-bits worth!

Both AA flights encountered turbulences that compromised flight and control.

AA flight 903 managed to land safely. Subsequent investigation seemed to indicate that at some point, tail-fin failure could have occurred.
AA flight 587 apparently ran into severe wake turbulence shortly after take-off, had a tail-fin break–up from crew desperately trying to regain control and crashed with loss of all 280+ lives on board plus 5 ground fatalities.

There seems to be consensus that AF 447 ran into heavy turbulence just before it crashed.

Two images seem to point to the horrifying similarities between the AA flight 587 and AF 447:
http://images.usatoday.com/news/_photos/2003/05/26-flight-inside.jpg
This is the image of AA flight 587’s tail fin.

http://d.yimg.com/a/p/afp/20090610/capt.photo_1244571955252-1-0.jpg?x=400&y=297&q=85&sig=QWRL5amGfGV4FfqUmK_Q6A--
This is the image of AF 447’s tail fin.

Could AF447 have suffered a catastrophic tail-fin failure, notwithstanding the precipitating factor of the pitot tube/ sensors icing over? Speculate: Initial loss of flight control as auto-pilot is automatically switched off, crew frantically struggles to regain control, pressure applied on tail-fin rudder pushes it to beyond theoretical design limits, tail-fin failure, bulkhead pressure dome compromised as tail-fin breaks away, cabin explosive decompression and hull disintegration……Hey! I am just a layman who should perhaps do best to keep his nose away from where he has no business sticking it in! And that’s the truth! No need to point any artillery at me!

Another About Turn

2009-06-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

Here we go again! Yet another turn-around on the SPUP-SPPF-SPP merry-go-round started since 1977! Abolish this, abolish that, in the quest to forge a new country with revolutionary vision for a prosperous future!
Three decades later, the revolutionary fervour has long dimmed, the prosperous future a promise that remains somewhere out there, always out of reach and the country has just about made a complete about-face in politics, education, health, social welfare, transportation, business, housing, economy, etc. to be where it was before the revolutionaries started messing things up.
The latest turn around due will be Personal Income Tax.
That very beast that was put to death in 1987, as part of the revolutionary zeal to ease the burden on the country’s suffering population!!
Obviously, the 1987 Income Tax abolition was accompanied with the inevitable personal salary down-sizing across the board in both public and private sectors, and merrily joined the ranks of all the other indirect taxes that cummulated to drive the average family finances to and through the ground.
22 years later, in the Seychelles Nation daily of 10th June, we read that a personal income tax will be introduced from 2010 as part of the new 2010-2013 tax reform, itself part of the November 2008 Economic reform.
Introduced? Like in ‘it-wasn’t-there, you-guys-never-knew-or-experienced-it, before?” Those wallahs got it wrong! It was there from the first years of settlement in the islands until 1987!
The proposed Tax Reform is just another of those vital bits of information that somehow failed to find a suitable place in the SPPF's 2006 –2011 presidential election program. This in itself is all rather unfortunate. What makes it worse is that we, as a people, gobble it all up with little protest at being so misled and taken for granted!!

From SPPF to Parti PePe - What’s in a name?

2009-06-02T23:36:00.000-07:00

So the SPUP / SPPF has a new name? Seychelles People's Party (Parti Lepep?)

As Shakespeare put it, call the Rose any other name, it would still remain a specific bunch of coloured petals with a scent, beauty and appeal that, in our minds, distinguish it from all others of the floral world!

It took 14 years to move from “People’s United Party” to “People’s Progressive Front” and 31 more years to dump that too-elusive unity and cohesive front and get down to just plain “People”. Clearly, the Reds seem to be in perpetual quest for a defining label, but are condemned to share the lot of the leopard who cannot change its spots!
The new “People’s Party” will be another name which will gradually fit into the local political landscape and vocabulary, if only by the sheer will and clout of its sponsors, the incumbent, Seychelles Government!
But let there be no doubt about it. The 1964-1978 version of the party never achieved anything close to uniting the people. Its 1978-2009 did usher in what was, for the cold-war time, the politically correct, island-bred version of international socialism, but not in the scope of a national cohesive front that it sought. If anything, it only contributed to heightening the depth of the divisive politics that pit Seychellois one against the other.
With this history of the stubborn wolf trying on sheep’s clothing, one can be forgiven to see the People’s Party as only another freshly –cloaked entity travelling down the road of political dedication, muttering its self-taught mantras and hoping for that final, unencumbered, freely given and deserving political respectability!
The new name will not wipe away the party’s archives and memory of its leaders of the victimisation, corruption, cronyism, state-engineered violence, abuse of human rights and liberties, exile and unexplained disappearances and deaths of political opponents!
Had the new party only bothered to have a good bath before doffing its new cloak, then maybe, just maybe, it could have washed itself off the filth accumulated over at least the last three decades, and start walking down the road of national reconciliation. Then, it could truly have called itself a People’s Party. For now, it will only remain “Parti PePe” (Hopefully not "Parti Pipi")

Seychelles NYS, 1980-1998 : R.I.P

2009-05-27T08:41:00.000-07:00

The ‘Seychelles Nation’ recently featured two brief separate items, with photos, on the launching of ‘NYS-generation’ association.
At first, I found it slightly amusing! I mean, it's true that we are in a democracy and people are free to associate as they wish! But to celebrate the memory of the NYS?
Ah well, I might as well wish the new NYS-81 the success they seek, ‘to promote the greater involvement of their members in the economic and civic activities of the country’. Unless of course, this is all just another convenient veil behind which political and financial favours, both foreign and local, can be harvested!

However, it may also be worthwhile to remind us all and in particular, the members of the new association, of the fact that the NYS being celebrated, is to many of the 18 Seychellois generations between 1981-1998, an experience best forgotten, and a blur on the national social and educational landscape!

A national Youth Service is generally one regrouping youths of the country in a program of activities that seeks to promote self-development and some commitment towards the community arising from awareness that the youth develops, of his place and role in the community and the country.
In styles and types of national Youth Services however, each country went their own ways. The Katimavik of Canada has little to compare to the Green Bombers of Zimbabwe, much less with our own little experience at educational reform.

The Seychelles National Youth Service of 1981 was the brainchild of the 1977-1992 single-party SPPF (Seychelles People’s Progressive Front, 1978) dictatorship to create the “New Seychellois” that the new socialist government sought after its 1977 coup d’etat.
It was the enactment of the socialist revolutionary vision of the time to force a break from Seychellois family tradition and education, and went far beyond the traditional mechanics of curriculum development and assessment that prepares a student for the world of work, and what normal families, communities and civil societies all over the world do to form “responsible, hardworking citizens”. It was no more, no less than a machine for political indoctrination into the socialist revolutionary zeal of the time. Full of patriotic fervour! Rich in slogans!

One must however, always be careful about slogans that politicians spout.

In Europe of the 1940s, there were a number of camps where people of certain races from different countries were regrouped to “work”. ‘Arbeit Macht Frei" was the slogan that a certain class of German politicians of the time, had prominently placed at the entrances to several of these camps. We are still trying today, to reconcile our collective responsibilities in allowing, by silent acquiescence, the nightmares of such camps to exist.
While none of the four Seychelles National Youth Service camps during the period 1980-1998 had anything to compare with the likes of Auschwitz and Dachau, they were nonetheless places all run on slogans, by educators bent on political indoctrination, with a mission to ‘free’ the future generations from values of the past that the new masters of the land had deemed retrograde and counter-revolutionary. Seychellois families where legally obliged to surrender their children, in their delicate, formative adolescent years, to these camps!

Lest we forget:

By virtue of the NYS Act 1980, any 16-18-year old Seychellois student who had successfully completed the compulsory 10-year primary and secondary education could “volunteer” for a period of service of two years into the National Youth Service. The successful completion of the 2 years’ of NYS, being an essential condition for admission to post secondary education, (to the exception of other nationals who could show proof of having lived outside the country up to the end of a normal secondary education and who satisfied requirements for acceptance for post-secondary education,) local, home educated students who aimed at higher, post secondary education and training had really no other option but to “volunteer” and spend the two years away from direct family care and influence.

With the NYS, the Seychellois One-Party SPPF State of 1981 declared itself fully, wholly and solely responsible for the social, moral and political education of the country’s youth.
Education being the desired outcome of teaching and learning, the SPPF took upon itself the mandate to undertake its own, special kind of educational reform.

Students were supposedly to undergo a fully comprehensive education that encompasses all the frontiers of human development, while immersed in real-life situations of living in a community, without what were perceived then as discriminatory social, employment and professional rankings and classes. The new education was to be the necessary cursus, which would sweep away what the revolutionaries considered as the tarnished product of the country’s 200-year social, class-ridden history. From the new education, would emerge the New Seychellois, ready, willing and fervently eager to embrace the new socialist ideology and ride off into each recurring sunrise under the wings of the benevolent SPPF and its leaders!

There were those who found no quarrel with our NYS. Indeed, there were enough foreign experts, politicians, ambassadors and world leaders from Chadli Ben Jehdid, Indira Gandhi to François Mitterand, who all trotted by in praise of this brand of home-grown educational reform and offered their technical support and resources, along with those of international organisations such as the UNESCO. In 1993, even the Former and First President, recently returned from exile, likened the institution to a youth holiday camp!

Despite the institution being abolished in 1998 and families retrieving their primal responsibilities in the education of their children, there are still many whose nostalgic reminiscence continues to strengthen their belief that the NYS was a bold and noble program! They proudly point to the generations of former NYS students who are now professionals and leaders in private business and in the public service. This, they claim, is proof of the success of their real-life, full-scale social and educational experimentation!

To make such a claim maybe their priviledge in a free society.

In my view it is also a claim that conveniently disposes of, and seeks accommodation with, the fact that the country, like any other, before and after, with or without, the NYS, never failed to produce cohorts of leaders, professionals and everything in between that keeps a country turning efficiently.

Theirs is a view that comes from looking too much in a mirror!

Maybe it is time that one rubs off the patina that makes the glass a mirror, and look through the glass to see the other sides of the NYS.

The one where, because of the dissenting political views of their families, the promise of a decent and professional future for hundreds of locally educated young Seychellois of the 1981-1997 generations, were blunted when they were deprived of their legitimate claim to post-secondary education.

The one where the future of hundreds others, were chewed up by the, however well-intentioned, haphazard social and living conditions in the NYS camps while they were merely going through the normal adolescent pranks, peer learning and self-discovery.

The one where hundreds of families that arose from the shunted NYS generations, remain forever dulled, unable to offer an opportunity for their own children of the new millennium to shine in echo to the new national label of ‘Our children...our Treasure!

The one where float in our deepest awareness, the skeletons of the millions spent during 17 years of wasted potential, misuse of resources and missed opportunities.

The one where the innocence of youth was violently ripped away under a barrage of fire-arms drills and revolutionary incantations to offer one’s life for the defence of the revolution, the latter when translated, simply turned out to be an invitation to face, AK47 in hand, one’s countrymen who dared to express their dissent towards the socialist ideology and policies of the SPPF!

The one where after the systematic indoctrination in the merit of the socialist ideology, and in the personality cult of the SPPF party hierarchy, endured by generations after generations, the modern Seychellois, incapable of separating the wheat from the chaff in the climate of contemporary democratic pluralism, reverts to bovine subservience and acquiescence that has already been ingrained in his sub-conscious. What, in 1992, the 2nd former President called “political maturity”!

Any adolescent from any culture may find as a great attraction the opportunity to live for some time away from direct parental authority and care. Notwithstanding, a future sociologist may very well have to undertake a closer analysis of the social impact on modern families arising from the NYS generations, to determine whether or not, and to what extent the current drift in morals and norms may be attributable to the national rebellion against societal norms, morals and codes, so fervent during the period 1978-1987, and which culminated in the NYS experience!

There seems then, to be little tribute to be paid to whomever over the NYS! There was and is no glory to be reaped from the sad experience. It was not for nothing that it was abandoned!. Let it RIP!

Bravo Seychelles

2009-04-28T07:12:00.000-07:00

A spot of appreciation goes to the SEYCHELLES' COAST GUARD for successfully responding to MSC Melody’s call for assistance, following a 26.04.09 foiled attack by pirates, and the follow-up and coordination by the Seychelles Coast Guard, that resulted in the interception of the pirates by a patrolling Spanish Frigate, their arrest and custody by the Seychelles Coast Guard.
That’s as reported by AP, courtesy http://news.yahoo.com as at 28.04.09 pm.

It was getting to be a tad worrisome to hear that these Somali wallahs were foraging at the fringes of our exclusive economic zone. The pirates attacking a cruise ship less that 300kms from our shores was either a declaration that they were fearless and powerful enough to predate anywhere and anytime they want, or a blatant act of qhat-induced recklessness verging on folly.

Now that we have nine pirates in our hands, let us hope that we do not flounder in the delicate diplomacy that will be required to manoeuvre between ensuring, on the one hand, the respect of our laws and international conventions, to which we are signatory, and which touch both matters of piracy within our territorial waters as well as potential threat to our national security, and on the other hand, using the nine Somalis as bargaining chips to secure the release of our compatriots held by other pirates in that chaotic land of Somalia.

We need to do what is right without causing any escalation, while at the same time letting it be known that we will not be caged in while pirates roam freely just beyond our shores, predating on our very livelihood.

Koste Seselwa ?

2009-04-09T05:02:00.000-07:00

“....paradise cannot be divided against itself. God did not give us this most beautiful of all countries for us to behave like cats and dogs conditioned by Red, Blue or Green parties which have lost all relevance under the conditions of today.
Today we must live on our own resources, not on polemics and slogans. Today we must face the truth and the realities and not be manipulators of divisive propaganda.
Through the philosophy of reconciliation we must destroy partisan, political polarisation and bring about a happy and equitable society where Seychellois will think about Seychelles First…….It is therefore important for today’s government to start thinking in this direction if its policy of working together is to be seen as sincere and serious.
Civilisation would be impossible without forgiveness. Life would be nothing but an endless cycle of vengeance, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, until we became a blind and toothless world…..”

This is what the Nation of 9-4-09 printed as a letter from Mr J.R.M Mancham, to share views he expects to elaborate upon before the national ‘Koste Seselwa Committee’

I wholly agree and applaud the Former and First President’s stance, consistent during the past 17 years since his first address on 12th April 1992, after 15 years in exile.
It also echoes similar positions recently taken by Mr. W. Ramkalawan, the Leader of the Opposition :
“... the leaders of this country need to come forward and acknowledge the wrongs that have brought so much hurt, seek ways to heal and from there we shall be able to live as a nation in unity. Too many hearts are still bleeding. There will never be peace as long as we have a nation with too many unsolved issues……. The other side of unity is indeed reconciliation. At a time when Mr. Michel is calling for the people to come together in those difficult times, is it not also the time for him to show initiative and lead by example? Should he not, together with the other leaders of this country for the last 32 years put finality to those issues? Is this not the way forward?.....” (Rebuilding Seychelles, SNP Leader's Message, 27-02-09)

Sadly, as with other similar past initiatives, this new call will likely fall on deaf ears.

For Mr. Mancham’s part, this will be simply because he is known to be from the Blue corner and the Reds in power have never shown the least inclination to seriously seek and work for National Unity other than in speeches that sound nice but that the wind has a nasty habit of ripping and carrying away until the next speech.

Fact is, after 32 years of holding the reins of power herding our 80K souls, the Reds just went and simply erased from memory, their own denunciations of not being given a fair chance at charting the way of the nation when they represented 46% of popular vote after the last pre-1976 winner-takes-all election.

The 1976 version of ‘Koste Seselwa’ was the platform that contributed to facilitating their forceful 1977 power take-over.

‘Chat chaudé craint l’eau froide’.

Despite the shift of forces in the local political arena and the systematic brainwashing by the incumbent Red Government since 1977, we remain deeply and enduringly split, along the lines of partisan politics. The Reds who used to be a big 46% minority are now the small majority (58.8% in 1993, 65.3% in 1998, 54.2% in 2002, 53.04% in 2004 and 56.2% in 2007.) The others, who were the small majority, are now the big minority, and the ones who clamour for the consideration they are deprived of.

Just as cats refrain from dipping in water, so do the Reds disdain power sharing. They are therefore most unlikely to revisit any form of government of National Unity, despite the calls they often regurgitated over the years, whenever it made good politics to be thus seen and heard.
A serious ‘Koste Seselwa’ call suggests that all children of the land is invited and welcome to come together and each take his rightful place in the task of nation-building.
It carries with it the unequivocal condition that when we come together, we do so with the trust that national interest is what we are all working for. We must not be expected to put aside our individual differences of politics or religion but recognise that these, and other differences, must bow before the greater importance and interest of our country.
It accepts that while we go about the business of nation building, we can each permit ourselves to express dissent and objections over the course we follow, as we may find cause to, and as is perfectly admissible in a democratic society. Dissent is healthy. With Objection, it contributes to keep our focus on consensus on what is best for the country. "Nobody has a monopoly on ideas", as the President J.A.Michel, said so himself.

The Reds have shown that they will never grasp this concept. They seem to find dissent and objection as redolent of the ghosts of dissatisfaction, power hunger and subversive overthrow plots, as they were in 1977. Coming together today is synonymous with rallying behind the one position that finds favour in their eyes. Theirs!

The current ‘Koste Seselwa’ drive seems therefore to be another slogan behind which they will, once again seek to manoeuvre, trying to stir patriotism and harness popular support. It is light-years away from a serious quest for National Unity, of the short-lived type the country basked under, from June 1976 to May 1977.

Let me hope I am wrong!

This is utterly outrageous.

2009-04-03T07:27:00.002-07:00

That criminals from the largely lawless Land of Punt would turn to piracy on the High Seas is bad enough. That they would venture to predate on one of their smallest neighbours is absolutely unforgivable.

Since the collapse of effective government in Somalia in the 1990s and the ever-increasing reports of piracy at the Horn of Africa by a bunch of disgruntled ex-militiamen and impoverished but strangely well-armed fishermen, there were glaring signs of the inevitability of little Seychelles eventually falling victim to the marauding Somali pirates. In November 2005 and April 2008, we made world news headlines when first a US cruise ship then, a Victoria-based Spanish purse-seiner managed to berth safely in Port Victoria after successfully escaping from attempted piracy some 150kms and 460kms respectively off the Somali Coast.

Over the last decade, there have been hundreds of attacks by pirates on shipping at the horn of Africa and in a large swath that lumbers down off the coasts of Kenya, Tanzania and the Comorros.
Since 2005, at least 82 separate and well-documented (*) attacks occurred that put in grave danger, the lives of over 3200 ship-crew members, fishermen and cruise ship passengers from nations across all continents, including from small islands states.
17 crew members have lost their lives as a direct result of pirate attacks on their ships. 130 are still in captivity, excluding the 9 Seychellois, assumed to also be in pirates’ hands since end March 09.
For the same period and number of attacks, only 72 pirates have been captured and 16 killed.

It helps not that we may be fully explained why some Somalis have turned to piracy. We know that the strategic position of a country with a quasi non-existent government, on the rich international shipping / trade route that pinches at the Gulf of Aden and the juicy prizes that can be plucked at merest effort, have combined with both the complacency of international shipping and international diplomacy, to lure both local discontents and criminals as well as the global underworld to gather for rich pickings.

Piracy and business interests have shared and fought over the same seas since time immemorial, in particular within the West Indian Ocean area. From that co-existence, modern business seems to have developed into adopting a position that seeks to largely accommodate pirates’ demands.

In only 15 of the 82 documented cases since 2005, an estimated MINIMUM US$23.265M have been paid out to the pirates in order to secure the release of captured crew, ship and cargo.

This is rich pickings indeed that would not pass by without drawing attention of powerful underworld interests who will more and more be drawn like moths to a flame, to our corner of the world. It already is difficult to deal with illegal narcotics, illegal immigration, slavery and other like activities from which piracy is a mere derivation. The situation can escalate and could potentially spiral out of control.
There is enough money to pay for faster and better boats, better technology, more effective weapons, to intercept, capture and hold ships and crew for ever higher ransom!

This cycle has to be broken. The international community seems to have woken up at last and by virtue of a UN Security Council December 2008 resolution, is trying to contain the situation, particularly in the area immediately around the Horn of Africa between latitudes 6° - 14° N and 45°- 55°S, where shipping is at the greatest risk and where the multinational naval task force managed to foil at least 13 separate attacks involving the lives of some 200 crew members, and the capture or death of 52 pirates.

As they seek to contain the situation north, the pirates seem to be mobile enough to have shifted some of their attention south, spreading their predatory nets right across the northern mouth of the Mozambique Channel, between 2°N-4°S and 48°-52°E. For us in Seychelles, that is too close for comfort!

The situation seems rather complex.

The Multi-national Task Force seem to be sometimes too bound by rules of engagement and diplomatic strings that must have the pirates and their command centers laughing.
Perhaps this explained their boldness to launch, in March 06, attacks against USS Cape St. George and USS Gonzalez. Or maybe they were just too ‘qhatted’ out!
A year later, in June 07, the USS Carter Hall failed to stop the capture of the MV Danica White and in October of the same year, the USS Porter also failed to stop the capture of the MV Golden Nori . A total US$2.5M were paid out in ransom.
The situation is also one of extreme danger to innocent crew, as the November 08 incident showed when the INS Tabar inadvertently destroyed the Thai FV Ekawat Nava 5 with the loss of 15 out of the 16 crew!

What is happening in the our western corner of the Indian Ocean is a pestering sore that has endured through the centuries and now needs to be cauterised and expunged. Small countries with limited resources like Seychelles, cannot afford to have the pirates gain a hold in the area where national security and sovereignty can be too easily challenged
Our country comprises small, remote islands too uncomfortably dispersed and over an area too easily accessible to pirates to both use as base to launch their attacks and as targets in themselves.

Now that piracy in the area has proven to offer rich prizes, those of the underworld can easily shift their attention from their other criminal activities to join ranks and cash in from our remote islands.

Each human life, even that of a pirate, is precious. However, when cupidity pushes someone to the point that human lives become mere barter chips that can be carelessly tossed aside, then we must harden our resolve not to be squeamish.

So far, the ‘Somali’ pirates seem not to have been specifically targeting ship crew, in so far as most captured have survived their ordeal. However this may change once our resolves harden. Hopefully, our 9 brothers will, along with the 130 ship crew still in captivity, find their freedom before the situation changes.

(*) Source: Wikipedia.org

Where is the truth On Public Land Management in Seychelles

2009-03-31T02:57:00.000-07:00

There seems to be something that is not right with Public Land Management in Seychelles.

Take these reports by the Nation of 31.03.09 regarding land at Grand Anse Mahe, Beau Vallon and Desroches Island.

At Grand Anse Mahe, a 20Ha state (public) property by the coast with some 700m sea front running more or less parallel with the west coat road from the La Miser Junction, at a varying width from 140 to 400m (for the purists, this area is centered at 4°40’39”S 55°27’00”E) was slotted for private tourism development.

Much of that property is taken up by some streams and their combined marshy estuary. For as long as I can remember, and that covers a span from the 1980s to date, the rest of the property has, over the years, seen some cultivation under the management of the public Agricultural Development Agencies, often more haphazard and experimental than a serious long-term goal in the quest of food security. For the better part of the last 10-odd years, the whole property was left more or less idle.

Somewhere in the labyrinth of the Seychelles’ Pubic Land Management machinery, somebody must have succumbed to the promise of converting yet another swath of apparently useless, and certainly unused, land into ready money and, in the process, hand over to foreigners, another part our national territory and heritage.

In all similar past conversions and transfers, there was never any consultation with the local population and district authorities. Both had little to say, in how state (public) land was managed, other than to rubber stamp the decision handed down from up or to swallow one’s indignation and frustration at being reduced to mere powerless spectators as our heritage is sometimes squandered.

One is therefore somewhat amused to read that the Government of Seychelles, on the merit of “very strong objections from the district’s authorities and some of the inhabitants,” is back-tracking on its decision to turn this property into tourism development.
If there is any truth in that, then one can take comfort that maybe from hereon, our voices can be heard, if we all call out loudly together. Maybe, from hereon, we may just have a chance to slow and eventually stop the process, which could otherwise risks us being turfed out as foreigners in and on our own land!

It takes a hefty dose of courage for one not used to being humble to come forward and, to all practical purposes, admit to clumsy handling of public property. But was this really the case? Let me not be too naïve.

We do not seem to have a Land Use Plan, as required by law, to determine the breath and scope of development in given areas. “Acceptance by the people” is not something that JJ just came up with! It’s been there as a requirement since Independence and always ignored. (Not surprisingly, the Minister responsible for Land Development seems to be completely ignorant of the Town and Country Planning Act, 1975 which does not grant, in the matter of publication / consultation with regard to LUP, the leeway ‘ if necessary the population as well’ )
At best we have only aborted attempts to Land Use Plans (1986,….) and some nice glossy displays that are merely wall decorations for some public land offices.

Did the Seychelles ‘Government not take into consideration that it “should not stop agricultural development when food security is an issue and that the land should be kept for agriculture rather than using it for tourism” before it even gave consideration to the proposal for tourism development project on the property? That would have been the time for “consultation” with the local population and district authorities! (Forget the EIA. Most often than not, it is prepared by the promoters.)
The horse would have been right there in front of the cart!

Considering all this, one is more tempted to believe that we are not being given all the reasons for the back-tracking. I would speculate that local (district) objections could be merely a convenient excuse behind which to hide either, or a combination of, awareness of some over-reaching, final hedging of the promoters or delicately sensitive financing that came to light.

And why do I feel uneasy about that prestigious Beau Vallon site!

That’s a chunk of land (centered approx. 4°36’42” S 55°25’50”E) with roughly 300m sea frontage and an inland depth of some 300m reaching beyond the river and new road, with one or two enclaved plots, off the current public parkings.

It’s been going back and forth since the mid 1990s after its previous ‘Acquisition in the Public Interest’. In the mid 1990s, a German promoter had a mega-tourism development project for the area. The Beau Vallon road was even diverted to accommodate the project.
20 years later, the area is still undeveloped. And we hear that the property has changed hands from one foreigner to another? Could this be one of those more than obvious versions of how to clean up some difficult-to-explain money!

What of Desroches Island ?

For those who may have forgotten, Desroches is a 6km long by widest 1km finger of coral island with a pristine perimeter of fine, white sandy beach lying on a SW/NE angle SW of Mahé. (centered, approx. 5°41’22”S and 53°40’23”E)
It emerged from its lack-lustre days as a guano, copra and agricultural crops island of the pre-independence years to the exclusive retreat of the priviledged few after the 1977 coup and a tourist resort under the management of the IDC from the late 1980s.
According to the nation article, the island now has a population of 13 IDC staff (I presume nationals) and 250-275 foreigners.

Was it really necessary to have 4 Cabinet Ministers and 2 Chief Executives with a haggle of other Public Service officials, travel 230kms to query “availability of employment for Seychellois workers, efforts to conserve the environment, opportunities for school children to visit the island and the impact of the different projects”?
That the IDC wants to embark on a publicity stunt, that’s its business. But to recruit our Public Service as extras takes the biscuit! Our honourable MNAs should do well to maintain a certain dignity and not be used as the next props.
I also hope public funding will not be required to provide school and health infrastructure for the largely foreign population working for an essentially private enterprise.

How responsible is the Media ?

2009-03-20T02:24:00.000-07:00

Modern Public Opinion is often formed on the playgrounds of Radios, TVs and Newspapers. Over the years, we have all developed a certain dependency on our daily feed of what we are told are news, worthy of being shared. Information vital to hold. Views necessary to chart our way through the miasma of grand and local societal politics so that we may keep as clear a vision of, and as secure a hold on, what we take to be our self-set goals in life.

Most of us cannot escape the daily incessant bombardment to the extent that it is about to reach that point where we risk being deprived of our individual capacity to think things out by and for ourselves. Our views, the opinions that we have, the visions and goals we set for our lives, these risk not being ours, but the result of what we have been fed and which we are often too willing to swallow unquestioningly.

We rarely doubt the veracity of what are passed as news and information, by those we have chosen to lay our trust in to inform us. Happy delusion that “If it’s on the radio, television and newspaper, then it must be true”.

We are often uneasy about this but feel it is too much bother to try and swim out from the flow that carries us along with everyone else. Until one day, something happens that tickles that remaining bit of self-awareness that distinguishes each of us from the mass.

For me it happened again while I was following the evening news and what I was hearing as the outrage of the world from the Pope Benedict XVI’s declared position on condom usage as worsening the problem of AIDS.

The news report mentioned that the Papal declaration was made during an in-flight interview on the Alitalia plane bearing the Pope and his delegation on an African Tour. There were some questions submitted in advance from which the Pope had chosen to answer a few, among which one from a journalist from a French state TV.
I have searched for and seemed to have found the original question:

“Holy Father among the many evils that affect Africa there is also the particular problem of the spread of AIDS. The position of the Catholic Church for fighting this evil is frequently considered unrealistic and ineffective.
“Will you address this issue during your trip? Holy Father, could you please respond in French to this question?”

The Pope then gave an in-depth response in Italian, of which an extracted translation was given:

“The problem of HIV/AIDS cannot be overcome with mere money (other translations refer to ‘slogans / publicity’). It’s necessary, but if there isn’t the heart/soul which knows how to apply it, if Africans do not help one another, it doesn’t help, the scourge cannot be resolved by distributing condoms: on the contrary, they increase (risks, aggravates)the problem. The solution can only come through a twofold commitment: firstly, the humanisation of sexuality, in other words a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another; and secondly, true friendship, above all with the suffering, a readiness - even through personal sacrifice - to stand by those who suffer”

This in itself caused a furore and raised the hackles of those who are campaigning against the spread of AIDS, from NGOs to Governments, to the UN.

The report then quickly turned to a commentary that the Papal Position has provoked outrage the world over. Important personalities were presented denouncing what was called an archaic catholic church, a problematic pope, and an unrealistic and detached church vision of the world.

This made me rather uneasy because, even in that brief extract of the Pope’s statement, which did not seem far removed from the oft-repeated stance of the Catholic Church on the matter of condoms, I think I had understood it differently.

I have looked further for the rest of the response and have found it to be pretty much what was reported, (albeit with reports of subsequent duplicitous tampering, by the Vatican Press Office, of the original declaration)

I therefore cannot really understand what the outcry is all about. Wasn’t the Pope rather putting condom usage in the overall sphere of the Catholic Church’s view on sexuality and the familiar message of abstinence and fidelity? Were we not missing the central message about ‘humanisation of sexuality…. a spiritual and human renewal bringing a new way of behaving towards one another’?

I have no business arguing for or against condom usage. Nor do I wish to go into the matter of the Catholic Church’s (or any other churches’) position on matters of sexuality and morality, its sidekick.
Suffice to say that while I follow the general view that condom usage has proven that it can effectively contribute towards a check in the spread of AIDS, among the other variety of STDs, I also feel that it carries with it the other hidden message of continued, unchecked, libertinistic sex. Almost as if, with the latter message, we seek to condone humanity indulging in his primal sexual urges with scant thought to responsibility and responsible living and to forget that we are supposed to be one notch up on the evolution ladder above animals.

This then, must be what the controversy is all about. Reconciling our freedom and right to indulge, as we want with our duty and moral obligation to be human and responsible as we do it.

Somewhere along the line, those who are on the fore-front of public opinion formulation seemed to have lost sight of what I take to be the real issue and succumbed, once again, to hide the truth under sensationalism, the stuff that sells and of which we seem never to tire.

I know that I will be better off without such blatantly biased, partisan and irresponsible media.

Pa Les Nou Tonbe

2009-03-18T05:07:00.000-07:00

To Dialogue or Not to Dialogue?

In the February 2009 State of the Nation Address, The President of the Seychelles, in recognising the local difficult economic situation, noted that …“There will always be politicians who will say that things could have been done in a different way.( …) The time for cheap politics is over. It’s time for action. It’s time for unity of purpose. This is what our people deserve (……) Let us not wait for tomorrow to share ideas. Nobody has the monopoly on ideas. …’
He then went on to propose ‘a high-level forum’ where he would meet officially as President with the Leader of Government Business and the Leader of the Opposition ‘to discuss issues of national importance on a regular basis.’

In his response to the President’s address, the Leader of the Opposition took the position that, ‘there are a lot of issues that can be resolved without such meetings. ‘
He explained his view that, to foster the spirit of unity, concrete action needs to be taken such that people could identify with what was going on, that he did not believe in talk-shop committees, when there is a lot of action that could be immediately taken. He called on the Government to show its spirit of openness by undertaking a series of such actions, viz:
· Appointing the First (and former) President as Ambassador
· Withdraw deportation order with respect to Mrs Gaetan Pierre
· Set up an Electoral Commission
· Have the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation be truly open and for the political opposition to have access to the national media at par with Government’s
· Amend the Public Order Act as recommended by both Judge Reilly and the National Assembly’s Law and Order Committee
· Take disciplinary action against all police officers who assaulted members of the political opposition on 3rd October 2006
· Return all maliciously appropriated and still undeveloped properties
· Allow the re-employment of all qualified citizens maliciously dismissed from their posts (in the public service)
· Allow all elected Members of the National Assembly the same opportunities in their respective constituencies
· Set up a Commission of Enquiry into all the Human Rights abuses, including disappearances, during the Single Party period
· Remove all hindrances to local entrepreneurs
· Re-instate the 29th June as the National Day
· Stop celebrating the 5th of June with State resources.

In effect, he turned down the offer to meet with the President and the Majority Party’s Chief Whip in the National Assembly, to discuss ‘ issues of national importance’

Each of us will have a different view on the sincerity of the President to discuss with the Opposition and of the wisdom of the latter in turning down the offer.
For my part, I feel that sincere or not, the President has made an offer to discuss. While he did not indicate what could be the agenda for the discussions, there is reasonable cause to believe that this could include, under the wide umbrella of ‘issues of national importance’ those subjects that the Leader of the Opposition would table.

Wisdom suggests that in a state of bi-partisan confrontation, that could potentially be a threat to national peace and unity, direct opportunities for dialogue and search for consensus should not be shunned, if the country is not to remain shut in the two sides shouting at each other across the walls of incomprehension and intolerance.

I would tend to agree that there are actions that the Seychelles Government could take immediately, that would give strength to its pledge to foster national unity and peace.

However, I also recognise that in all fairness, the Government is unlikely to accede to all that the Opposition wants done simply because some of these actions are more politically loaded than others. Others may require impartial definition and appreciation and a consensus on what kind of redress would be best suited. Others yet may merely be extracts from the political opposition’s program that few incumbent, self-respecting governments would want to act upon. The Leader of the Opposition knows that. Government knows that. In between their two positions, must lie a ‘terrain d’entente’, a compromise that can only be the fruit of dialogue.

This said, the Leader of the Opposition may not be entirely wrong in finding the type of dialogue offered as the usual defenceless hostage where the Government merely seeks to gain a certain political advantage. The last such dialogue was concluded with bitter recriminations and suspicions that Government was calling the tune for the political opposition to dance.

Let’s face it. The SPPF Government rules by what it believes in and what it holds to be true and fair. That’s their democratically endorsed mandate, which we need to respect.

It may not be right for the Government, elected by a 53% majority, to rule the country without regard to the views of the remaining 47% minority.

It may similarly not be right for the Constitutional representative of that minority to turn away from the opportunity offered under public limelight, to at least attempt to directly and immediately impact of how government rules and sets priorities.

The opportunity being offered for dialogue can be turned into an occasion for a true start to the national healing process, if both sides can show that they can free themselves from the prison of their respective rhetoric. The healing itself will not be an easy road. There will likely be recurring relapses, and the despair each brings along, to overcome as we try each proposed healing therapy. But as long as we remain focused on and committed to healing the national wounds, we would at least have started moving away from the state of sickness that has so corrupted our nation. Not to embrace dialogue is to allow the national wounds to fester.

This therefore is why I believe that the Leader of the Opposition should reconsider his stance.
Democracy will flourish in Seychelles only when all stakeholders live up to their constitutional responsibilities, and however much of a political and personal quandary they may find they face, the political fulfilment of the expectations, dreams and ambitions for national cohesion and peace, they asked that we entrust them with, must remain their priority above everything else.

Can James Michel be brave enough to be different from Albert Rene?

2009-03-01T04:36:00.000-08:00

Everybody seems to have an angle on what is best for the country. And everybody’s angle is better than the next guy’s. The best angle being the exclusive reserve of those cosseted in the People’s House.
That’s the way it has been these past three decades in Seychelles.
Until the Headman from State House made the unprecedented and quite unexpected admission a few days ago, that “Nobody has the monopoly on ideas”.

This now being officially the case, we can all stop griping and unlock our caged ideas. Let these blossom, roam free and fuse with others’. Perhaps, they may even end up providing inspiration to those whose responsibility it is to reckon us all out of the mess they dug us in, in the first place.

To figure out what is best for the country, we need first to know what the condition the country is in and where it wants to go.

After years of customary denials, the Headman has finally admitted that the national economy is in a mess, though his choice of descriptive may have been somewhat more flowery. Part of the blame can be laid at the doorstep of the global economic recession. But only part. The rest of the blame is to be landed right in our own laps for having disregarded for too long, the essential ingredient for economic prosperity: Wealth Generation!

We want the country to provide us all, with a secure and stable environment with rewarding employment, decent public services, utilities and infrastructures, sustainable economic progress with money in the bank for income generating projects, people development, education, housing, health care and trouble-free retirement.

To provide for these, we need to stop pulling out that tired Foreign-Aid basket. We need to take a step back from allowing only the selective club of the international investors, to drink at the fountain of national wealth creation. We need to turn away from the quick fixes, after fast, easy and immediate money, that the erstwhile Headman of 27 years tenure, forced the country into.
We are now well past an Economic Development Act.
We need no longer bother after finding oil within our EEZ. A quarter century of inconclusive research, the dubious long term good and proven evils of that type of fossilised wealth should be warning enough for us to steer clear.
A reality check has shown that we need to move ahead from our dreams to be a regional commercial hub. The only serious international (off-shore) business we seem to attract are those who have lost the moral trust of other nations.

Let us find inspiration in the words of USA President Barrack Obama: “The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run (the country) for far too long." Let us start working for the Seychellois people.

At each individual level, we need to be made to feel included in the overall national wealth generation machinery, with clear, unfettered opportunities, devoid of state interference, open for each of us with the will, and means to do our bit to create our own, little riches. The sum of our individual wealth will add to that from serious investors’ and other partners’, to be that of the nation’s.

We have to start thinking out of the box, if we are to allow the whole nation to fully, freely and effectively participate in wealth generation.
It is not enough to invest in the development of small local industries and agriculture. However important and vital these may be, there is just no way a population of 80K will provide adequate market opportunities for wealth generation based on these two sectors. At best these local enterprises would be a mere service to the community, not unlike the merchants across the district shop counters, with the farmers merely contributing towards national food security. Unless we seek to turn our varied tropical fruits, including the humble breadfruit, into real, competitive export potential and not merely snacks for school kids, animal feed and nocturnal bat banquets!

True wealth lies in bringing in hard currency from real-value product exportation as well as exploitation of our natural resources. Real wealth does not lie in circulating what we create among ourselves.

We had the right targets more than three decades ago. We tapped into the blossoming world tourism market. We talked of development of our marine resources. We sought food self-sufficiency.
We had these right!!.
Then we messed up badly in favour of political expediency and quick fixes. We gave up on serious investments against long- term returns in favour of securing immediate political popularity via state-engineered economic development.

We turned our tourism potential into ‘Haut de Gamme’, making it the preserves of investors with well-lined bank accounts. Our outer islands, once a potential for agricultural development, even Coetivy, that for some time turned out world-famous prawns, have been mostly turned into exclusive resorts that now suffer the caprices of the trade. Five-star resorts slowly evolved to become the order of the day, targeting the exclusively rich.
In this we denied ourselves the reality that the bulk of income from tourism is provided not by film stars and other rich, but by the average European (our main tourism source) household who saved over months to have their annual 10-days under the tropical sun. Thailand, Mauritius, island countries of the Caribbean and elsewhere offering the same tropical setting, did not poke themselves in the eyes.
30 years after we launched ourselves in the tourism adventure, our two original flagships, the Reef Hotel and the Mahe Beach Hotel have all but floundered, along with numerous family guesthouses and cottage accommodation. Exclusive five star resorts abound, all seeking to cater for the needs of the 100K visitors we receive annually. The bulk of whom, would prefer the more modest 3-stars and other like hotels or family guesthouses.
There was never a place allowed in this state-sponsored tourism development for the average family, other than from the other end of that service delivery : as docile (and reportedly - and no wonder - often resentful) help.

After three decades of going round in circles, reality must have struck a park somewhere, when in October 2008, the National Assembly unanimously approved a motion tabled by the Honourable MNA from La Digue, for opening up tourism accommodation to families with convenient facilities to offer.
That was a clear step in the right direction.
Allow the common people to tap into the tourism market. As the motion put it, to offer an authentic and rich experience, the very thing a more informed and concerned tourist wants. Not to be parked and pampered by the artificial comforts of the 5-star resorts, but to be more in touch with the real culture and people of the holiday destination. To feel that the holiday has truly been a direct contribution to making the world a better place to live in. Equitable commerce. As good with tourism as it is with cocoa and coffee. As good as eco-tourism.
That is the way to go.
We need not abandon the 5-star resorts. Nor local investing in modest hotels and guest houses. We only need to allow individual families with a decent spare room, to offer it as tourist accommodation.
Let there be no more talk of ‘Haut de Gamme’.
Let there neither be doors opening to ‘back-pack’ tourists. But let these not be shut off either.
Let there be accommodation to cater for every purse.
Let the common folks get a chance at collecting some spare €s, £s, $s, and SARs.
Let the initiative not be suffocated in unnecessary bureaucratic red tape and regulatory controls, other than those vital to making sure no one kills the golden goose before it even settles on the nest!

More than three decades after we took our place at the Table of Nations, and stood on our national feet, we have not one single ship to harness the riches from our bountiful sea.
Not that we were never or are not aware of the wealth that we have allowed and still allow, others to harvest before our very eyes. We have had recent occasions to hear our Headman bemoan the paltry incomes we derived from licences we give to allow foreign companies’ harvesting the billions in US$ worth of fish in our waters.

We were ready to invest in tanker-building. But not on purse-seining, other than in the ill-fated ‘Spirit of Koxe’ by the possibly well-meaning but naïve and arrogant nomenclatura. And now, someone is chewing on the bone of Tuna ranching!
For Pete’s sake! How could we have been and remain so blind!!

Without cancelling the licences we issue for others to ship in our exclusive economic zone, let us now make it a condition for each foreign fishing vessel licenced to fish in our waters, to have a few of our local trained and experienced fishermen on board. Let us now invest in building our own fleet of purse-seiners, in training the crew to handle and others to maintain and repair it. Let us make it a target to be achieved within the next 10 years.
Let us also focus on the potential of demersal fishing for medium – sized snappers, groupers, ‘capitaines’ and reef fish, with a view to cash in, with competitive costs and quality, on the selective and prized European markets.
Let us explore deep-sea lobster and prawn fishing…our continental plateau may have riches we have not even thought about. Let us explore the full potential for pearl culture! For Marine Algae!
Let us imbue economic life back into our outer islands. We shall use them as regional bases for our varied fishing enterprises, from state – facilitated funding to local investors, but not excluding partnership with foreign capital, as long as we remain in control.

Let us do these things, but let us not be greedy to be rich overnight!
Then we can go out start getting into fair competition and serious fish-trading with our European and Asian partners.

We shall then be getting the share of the wealth we want, are capable of getting by our own hands, and is due to us, from our sea. We shall no longer be moaning at all the loot that passes us by. We shall be counting and spreading it out for the national good.

The sea is out bread. Tourism is the butter.
Tourism is fickle. When the pinch settles in, we can do without it for a time.
The world will always, however, be hungry for fish, sea –food and other sea products!

Of the 2009 Seychells State Of the Nation: A raw first reaction

2009-02-27T10:01:00.000-08:00

February 26th 2009 was another of those annual moments when each Seychellois took a respite from the everyday, individual short-view concerns, to take a broader look at the Nation, with the hope that it may, for each one of us, provide an insight into the place each of us occupy in the national scheme of things and the scope and breath of what we may individually and collectively be required to do in order to secure our common, long-term prosperity.

The State of The Nation Address is a priviledged moment for the person in whose hand we have, by popular democratic vote, entrusted the responsibility to chart the course of the nation to ensure for each of us, among other things, that national goal of long-term prosperity, to tell us how far we are along this road.

It is a moment for us to be informed since the last address, of the progress we have achieved, the wealth we have garnered, the debts we contracted, the perils we overcame, the scope of any adjustments we have had to make, and the outlook for the immediate and long term futures.
It is a solemn moment for us to receive hard, raw figures, untouched statistics, a report of realities encountered, untainted by political bias and rhetoric, which we may all digest as befits our individual abilities, to find cause for contentment or concern, the better to direct our hands and resolve towards working for the collective good.

Did the 2009 Seychelles’ State of the Nation Address provide us with a clear, untainted picture of how the national economy is doing? Did it provide us with a clear insight in how the various sectors of the national service and economy performed? Did it provide a precise indication of what we achieved from the targets we had set ourselves, and the reasons for eventual failures and how these will be addressed?
Did it provide us with a road map by which we, as a nation, may chart through the perils of the current global economic recession?

Presumably the Seychelles Head of State and his advisers are happy that they did so.
For my humble part, I feel, another of the now-familiar pangs of unquenched thirst for the true state of the nation of which I am part. This is not a matter of seeing the glass half empty. It is a matter of seeing, yet again, the Head of State skirt the issues and lose himself in what I consider as mind-numbing rhetoric. I endured his address not with the trust of a patient before a qualified doctor’s consultation and diagnosis, but as the slightly bemused spectator at a political comedy where the main actor seemed to have forgotten his lines and role. In short, the Seychelles State of the Nation can be reduced into one word : Reform.

This is the Economic Reform Program that the nation entered into in November 2008, without the merest suggestion of it during the February 2008 address, and that the Head of State is now shoving down our throats as the inevitable action he was compelled to take to both avert further risks arising from the global economic crisis as well as to preserve the hope of the prosperity he promised the nation.
This subject remained the central, if not the only, theme of his address, in which he doled out a few of the quick fixes he wants us to believe he is adamantly against.

Listening to the President, one can easily be forgiven for understanding that the November 2008 Economic Reform was not a thoroughly thought-out program. Certainly the nation was never given an opportunity to provide an input prior to the SPPF government unleashing it over our unprepared heads. The 2005 district consultations provided not an iota insight into what Government was envisaging then for November 2008, if ever it was then envisaging anything! This is what he must have meant when he revealed that ‘politicians…..will not say what they would do tomorrow’
Nobody among those who prepared and planned the Reform Program seemed to have understood the difficulties that it would mean to the Seychellois families. Once the program was launched, there was the immediate dash by all, including the Government, to adjust costs and fees. The STC raised costs. The PUC raised rates. The SPTC raised fares. Loan Interests from both private commercial and Government, followed as did animal feed production. The climate was ripe for general hike in all commodity costs.
In anticipation of the repercussions that these would have on the more vulnerable groups, a Social Welfare Agency was created to ensure a just and objective appreciation and provision of social assistance.
Three months later and notwithstanding the few millions US$ that we have accumulated in central reserves, the national mood is one where families are under pressure and needs to be helped with “high cost of living …(a) primary concern”

The STC is now required to bring down costs in 11 basic commodities and General Service Tax (GST) will be removed from day-old chicks and animal feed it produces. As it will be on medicines and some agricultural supplies. Housing loan repayments may be restructured. The Social Welfare Agency must revise its National Assembly-approved case appreciation to “help parents who are working hard but are still struggling to make ends meet.”
The PUC and the SPTC will be subjected to performance and financial audits, to provide, among other things, “affordable services. GST raise in the tourism sector will be delayed, in answer to the anticipated bite in projected 2009 revenue from tourism. (This one, perhaps the only real result of the global crisis!)

No indication was given on the individual and cumulative costs of these measures, and most importantly, in the current national context, on how they will be financed and how they will impact on the final reform outcome.

To me then, they are Quick Fixes, made convenient and seem to answer a more immediate need to pacify and accommodate the national mood of resentment.

In the end, I found very little cause to rejoice in the President’s state of the Nation. Because it did not seem to really have addressed the nation’s state. It only delivered the same words and promises that I always heard and that seemed to come from the mouth of someone who prefers to live in another reality, one defined by the boundaries of political expediency and far removed from that of the Nation he heads.

There is cause indeed, to be Gloomy!

Unless one takes cheer from the revelation that soon we will not require visas for short-stays in the EU.
That one nearly got caught up in the web of state-house engineered achievements. The presidential pride should be tempered from realising that the EU Council resolved this matter since March 2001 (CE) no 539/2001) and Seychelles joined Mauritius, Antigua / Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados and St-Christophe / Nevis on that famous Annex 2 by virtue of CE 1932/2006.

Gloom also when one understands that 32 years ago, the President of Today was among those who found it unforgivable for a president to spend so much time in foreign countries, away from national affairs.
Today, his own presidential time spent away, is “ensuring our presence on the international scene (which) is of particular importance.” His “undertakings on the international stage are aimed at promoting the good image of our country and its reputation”
It has been said that these noble aims were among the grievances that cost the first President his seat up at the end of State House Avenue.

We have a long way to go !

Plus ça Change

2009-01-26T00:21:00.000-08:00

In the wake of the Seychelles’ 2008 Economic Reform Program, a new Welfare Agency, took over from the moribund Means Testing Board, to “help the most vulnerable, cope with the subsequent rise in the cost of living”. Its overall functions, procedures and criteria to determine and grant applications, were defined by the Social Welfare Agency Bill of 14th October 2008.

The new Agency was to be a break from the previous Means Testing, the latter often suspected, rightly or not, of serving the needs of local politicians who pulled strings to secure little financial and other material rewards for their constituents. Often, a vote-buying gig, financed through state coffers!

It was rightly seen as a new approach to ensure a just and objective appreciation of all applications for social assistance. An approach that, in my view, was quite welcome, its predecessor having too often been stigmatised by political interference!

In its issue of 9th December 2008, the Seychelles ‘Nation’ daily published the new “Adult Equivalence Scale” criteria and a detailed presentation and explanation of the formula by which applications would be assessed.

In its issue of 17th January 2009, the ‘Nation’ published a first report from the Welfare Agency. From this, we learnt that the Agency had received and assessed some 676 applications over a two-months’ period, from November to December 08. We also learnt that only 304 applications (45%) qualified for assistance.

In its issue of 26.01, the ‘Nation’ revealed that the president “is not entirely satisfied with the way the agency is working……(and) said there is a need to review the way it operates so cases are dealt with faster and more effectively (….).also there is a need to revise the “weights” that determine how much a needy family should get from the agency. …(…..) to bring them in line with the current rate of inflation…..”.

This, in my view, spells out clearly, the old demons the Agency was to have exorcised.

In short, more than half of those who applied for social assistance in a two months’ period, were deemed not qualified by an objective means-assessment criteria.

That’s 372 cases thrown out!!. 372 families turned down.!! Which translates into an average of 15-odd families per district!!. Each one of them likely to have been on the backs of their local member of parliament, and demanding redress!
This, of course, is mere extrapolation, however much based it can be, on a recall of how things work in our sunny isles! A local MP, rendered irate by refusal of applications he / she had sponsored, will go about the usual desk - fist ramming, and accusations of bureaucracy, preferential treatments, etc by the Welfare Agency. In due course, sufficient background noise is created to corner the officers of the Agency and divert attention from the need for respect of the professionalism by which they are legally bound to work.

Ergo, a bare 2 months into operation, the Welfare Agency risks having to throw out the window, its objective appraisal of social needs, in favour of the usual pandering and political interference. It will not only be about ensuring speedy issue of assistance to “people looking for employment (who) need basic necessities like food during the time they are not working” nor “parents who need educational materials and other necessities for their children to go to school (and) cannot wait for a month to get help, because the children will not be able to go to school during this time”

Like it or not, it will be about ensuring assistance to all cases the local MPs have already deemed as deserving, and referred to the Agency.

Plus ça change…….!!

I suggest a Reality check

2009-01-04T23:47:00.000-08:00

"2008 was full of challenges and opportunities……(that) tested the resilience, spiritedness and determination of the Seychellois people and was also a year when we showed our courage.
We had to take tough decisions. Like all countries in the world, big and small, we were hit hard, indeed very hard, by the effects of the global financial crisis. There are people in the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries who have lost all their savings,” he said…..(and) gave examples of the many who lost their pensions, houses and jobs but said in spite of our challenges such things did not happen here and we are still faring well"(Extract from the Presidential End-of -Year message, published by the Seychelles Nation of 31.12.08)

I could not help but feel that, once again, the state misinformation machine is working away at lulling our minds and senses, seeking to deprive us of the ability to think things out clearly and see the local and world realities as they really are.

There may not have been any bank collapse in Seychelles and no one has yet lost their homes , as a direct result of the global financial crisis and, what many well-informed circles are already calling, creeping economic recession!

Notwithstanding, local pensions, savings and salaries have all been drastically skimmed off, as a direct result of the economic reforms and escalating prices.

Must we also be reminded that the loss of jobs, houses, savings, etc in US Europe and Japan (and other countries) was the direct result of private financiers’ cupidity and longing for fat profits taking them far beyond the frontiers of reasonable risk management.?

Comfortable within their powerful ivory towers, with their well-heeled lobbyists keeping too-inquisitive, regulatory controls at bay, they knowingly, and over several years, pushed their speculative financial institutions to chase after the illusory sub-prime golden egg that turned out to be thoroughly rotten. In other moments, they were also contributors to the outright criminal activity by the ilk of Madoff, or apparent dissimulation of risks by Kerviel and others, that conned banks, corporations, industry, investors and other fat private accounts into being over-exposed and writing their own individual financial oblivion.

In a private-sector-controlled market economy, this had the snow-ball effect that dropped a chill in nearly everybody’s lap, the world over! The global inter-link of these financial institutions over and across national frontiers, turned the speculative fiasco into the world’s worst financial and confidence crisis since the 1929 crash.

Let it be said clearly: The 2008 Reform Program was not hatched from the current global crisis. It was ‘home grown’, slowly incubating during the last 30 years from 1977, and a direct result from state-engineered, ill conceived investments, unsustainable development programs, and outright clumsy financial management, that have too often, blurred the national economic landscape and stunted economic progress.

The cumulative consequence of the quixotic economic mis-management is what brought Seychelles to its knees. Not the high prices of fuel on the world market. Not the Maddof scam and the other international financial scandals. Not the financial collapse and confidence crisis in western countries.

This said, let there be Respect, Peace, Love and Resolve to find Happiness, for all of you out there during 2009!

Seychelles 2008 Economic Reform: Are We Living The Same Reality?

2008-11-10T03:44:00.000-08:00

Barely a week ago, the 85K population of the Seychelles were released from the anxiety of the awaited and feared program of economic reforms. Since then, a lot has been said and written and, I warrant, still a lot more awaits to be said and written on the announced Reform Package.

There are those who saw in the reform package clear signs that the country was on the verge of economic collapse and had been forced to call on the IMF for economic bail- out.
Some would find not unreasonable cause to see the current national economic dire straits as the cumulative results of misguided policies and short-term planning as the national and political leaders chased one mirage of economic robustness after another and thus steered the country to the edge of the abyss.
Others saw in the reform package, a mere transitory moment of national hardship, on the way to the visionary future of national prosperity, charted under the current incumbent political party that has ruled the destiny of the nation these past 30 years.
Some others yet, strengthened in their self-imposed delusion, see in the reform package, a rallying call for national unity and an opportunity for the sons and daughters of the land to dig deep into their patriotic resolves to forget the past and strive harder to keep the country upright.

It is enough to make one wonder whether we all live in the same country and therefore exposed to the same realities.

Let there be no doubt about both the bitterness and the painful bite of the ’economic reform’ program proposed by the Government. All indications are that the measures announced are simply the tip of the iceberg. As with any self-respecting iceberg, as the exposed tip melts, it is replaced by part of the greater submerged, hidden mass until the whole mess suddenly looses that subtle balance and tips over, causing supremely dangerous conditions for anyone in close orbit. So it shall be with the Seychelles Reform.
The exposed tip is the floating rupee. The submerged mass is the repercussions from escalating costs that will come from market adjustment to its true value that it will be granted by local and international traders.
As it stands, the value of the rupee is already fluctuating wildly. Conflicting local and international reports give its value as at 3rd November at an average 16.97 to the US $ (20:1, 18:1, 15.58:1,14.29:1). This represents a near 100% depreciation translated into a halving of its pre-November 08 purchasing power.

For the average household with non-elastic income, this dramatic reduction of purchasing power will likely be further exacerbated when retailers will start to adjust local commodity prices.
Then will come the crunching moment where families will have to confront the reality of being turned into paupers in so far as their income no longer allows them to be decently fed, clothed and housed.
Whatever money they had, in the bank or under the mattress, will have suddenly lost half its worth in the space of a few days! Those lucky enough to have retained their employment in the public service will likely be bemused by the 17% pay rise against the 50% devaluation and 20% rise in service costs.
I fear for my country. I fear for the welfare of my fellow countrymen. We have stoically endured, over the past 30 years, a plethora of empty promises from our national leaders.
Wasn’t it in the mid 1990s, therefore some 15 years ago, that the erstwhile single party President demanded of us that we make a little sacrifice and tighten our belts while we trudge through the dark tunnel of economic dire straits towards the brilliant light of prosperity that he and his party had prepared for the nation?

What happened since then? Why is it that the nation seems forever condemned to travel the path of illusory and therefore elusive prosperity? Did the former President finally understand that he had been a lousy captain and had not stopped the ship of the nation to drift and finally coast dangerously towards the reefs of economic collapse?
Was this ultimate dawning of the truth the compelling motivation for him to step down and allow his 2IC to handle the emergency manoeuvres to keep the ship of state afloat?
And why does the new man have to tell us today, that the national economic hardship is a “transitory phase for us to see the light at the end of the tunnel.”
Is there no one with the guts to swim through the bilge water of the state-engineered misinformation to admit that the ship of state is truly in poor condition and will sink unless all hands come on deck to receive precise orders of where to go and with what tools and in what manner to carry out emergency repairs?

Before we even begin to start thinking about pulling “our resources and ideas together and work so as to keep our country standing and strong” we need to be certain that our individual and collective actions will not be another fart in the wind.
We need to know in precise details what went wrong, when and how.
From there, we can make an informed decision about the best course of action to take so as to avoid the same pitfalls of yesterday.
Above all, we must resolve not to heed the advice of those who steered and led us to the edge of the precipice. If they had any sense of decency, they would have at least accepted their failures as leaders and stepped aside to allow others from the ranks to come forward and take the lead.

We had no, or little, say in the decision our leaders took to draw huge financial loans to pave the way to their vision of economic progress and stability. If our understanding of the complexities of directing and running national economic affairs is limited, we know that it shares some basic truths with the more modest family business. Progress is ensured by getting your priorities right. By only investing after a careful and realistic appraisal of your growth and returns potential. By shunning big short-term relief in favour of small sustainable returns to cumulate in long-term benefits.

Somewhere along the line we, as a nation, lost interest in the bigger picture and naively surrendered our destiny in the hands of those who had nice words to lull our vigilance. Time and again, at each election time, we allowed ourselves to be too easily bought by the little honey and big promises handed out.
The country’s economic recovery will be launched. Investor confidence will be boosted. Houses will be built for all, and GDP will be doubled by 2017!!.
Those were big promises that required equally big investment and loans.

Ironically, the real cause of the country taking that final step that led into our current economic abyss, may be the defaulting on the repayment on one such big loan and investment that instead of launching us off, bowled us over and could very well bury us in.

There will be hard times indeed for us now to face.

Some average families will be forced on their knees, as they see their live savings and projects to safeguard the future of their children and their own retirement suddenly wiped away.
When the basic Rs.100K Life Insurance Policy matures after 15 years to a potentially only 50% purchasing value!
When contributions over the past years into the Pension Scheme are wiped down to a fraction of their worth.

Some families will fade away in silent disavowal, with memories of what life used to be and the acid taste of dreams for the children that would now never be fulfilled. Others will seek to understand how they were so wrong and so easily fooled, and in the process, break and tear themselves apart, unwilling to accept the inevitable and will seek to demand from their local leaders, at the least, an explanation that is not another rehearsal in the usual empty rhetoric.
It will be a moment of greatest risk to national peace and cohesion when a man will be faced with the sight of his family forced on its knees, his children going hungry, his house falling in disrepair, apathy pushing him further into depression and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness to stay the descent into despair.
Then there will rise such a wail of protest at being so humiliated, of hopes and dreams nurtured on empty promises, of being reduced to paupers as the inevitable result of poor national vision, planning and leadership.
There will then be no place for national unity. There will then be no place for forgiveness. The time to swallow bitter pills coated in honey will have passed.

The only thing left to do before we start the rebuilding process shall be to force those responsible for our woes, to account!
It will be the time when we as a nation will ask of the current President, to explain why after so many years, his ruling party is, in 2008, still locked in “working to put the national economy on a sound footing,” and how do we make the difference of the “right track “ of today from all the other right tracks of yesterday?

You, who may be a completely lost surfer who accidentally strayed onto this page, don’t read it as an incitement “to riot or create disturbances or to insult others”. Don’t read it as simply another ‘Red-Basher’. It is intended to be a mere small contribution towards national mind awakening to embrace reality.

Barrack Obama : A beacon for dreams kept alive

2008-11-05T00:16:00.000-08:00

Individually we are, each of us, a minute piece of insignificance in the great swirl of life and cultures. What makes each of us count is that now and then, we become conscious of what we are and are humbled by the enduring intensity of our profound desire to seek and reach out for change.
Today, the world woke up to the reminder that change does come about when the flame of hope is kept alive, when there are among us those who are strong-willed and dedicated enough to not only dream of change but to reach out and make it happen.
Today something stirred in each of us living far beyond the direct and immediate realities of partisan politics of the United States of America, as we received the news that the modern-day wealthiest and militarily most powerful nation went beyond their resignation and cynicism to embrace the change nurtured in the hearts and minds of millions of her children.
To those of us who sought to look deeper at what this new stirring represents, we embrace the comfort and warmth it brought in our renewed hope for a better world. A world where this time-round, we all may rally in spirit by the USA, to confound the forces that seek to tear our civilisations and cultures apart, to reinvigorate our national institutions in the battle for social justice against vested selfish interests and to channel our resolves to halt the deterioration of our living environment and preserve a safer home for future generations.
Barrack Obama is the name borne by the person who embodies this defining and historical moment.
He represents far beyond being head of the USA Democrats’ party ticket and the first non-white to occupy the Chief Executive post of that great country.
He is the beacon that we now know was shining during our long dream and around whom we will gather, each in our separate corners, united in a common purpose to confront the tasks ahead.
Today is our moment. Today is our awakening call. It was long in coming. We were long in dreaming. We are now awake. Our futures do not seem to be as bleak, despite the challenges of global world crises, from wars, financial depression and economic recession to hunger, famine, civil strife and human rights abuse, oppression and global warming.

It is now time to get to work. To nurture the flame of our renewed hope. Yes, We Can!!

On the Seychelles 2008 Economic Reform Program

2008-11-04T02:52:00.001-08:00

I must have missed something in the 4k-word and much-anticipated, Presidential Address on the Seychelles 2008 Reform Program.
Either that or I am much thicker than 2 madrier bodamyen to fully grasp what the much touted and feared reform is all about.
For my own benefit, I need to summarise the Reform Program as outlined by what could pass as an early State of the Nation Address, the President made on the night of 31st October.
Once the usual rhetorical veneer is removed, it would seem that the World Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Union, some bilateral partners and certain friendly countries and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have contributed to put together a Reform package for Seychelles, which the president finds as

1.the logical extention and application of his April 2004 Presidential vision for the nation:
To build upon (unspecified) ‘socio-economic acquis’, based on the principle of social justice which puts the people at the centre of development
For the public sector to be at the service of the people and the private sector to be the fountain of economic prosperity
For solid democracy, marked by transparency and good governance, to prevail and spiritual and moral values social well-being to flourish
For every citizen to enjoy the rights and discharge the responsibilities and every able-bodied person to work, enjoy the fruits their labour and contribute to national development
For the (2004) economic difficulties to be overcome and the country integrate fully in the world economy in such a way that it can continue to enjoy a good quality of life.

2. an unfortunate spin-off from the world financial and economic crisis and rising cost of living, which presented Seychelles with challenges requiring new strategies and approaches to modernise the national economy

3. allowing:
Increases of salaries by an average 15-16%; social security (retirement benefits) by around 15%; welfare benefits by 20%; minimum wage by 6.89% (from 14.50 /hr to 15.50/hr);
Reduction of the public service work force by 12.5% ;
Expenditure control by public service departments: slow down or shelve a number of national projects, manage their budgets efficiently and in transparency ,do away with abuse and wastage, promote good governance, transparency and openness; Unspecified means by which 8000 positions in the private sector will be localised;
Introduction of 15% General Service Tax on tenancies and 10% tax on interests earned through savings account .
The floating of the national currency, hoping that this will : open a number of new business opportunities, including possibilities for more exchange bureaux, boost Seychellois’ confidence in the capacity of the country to attract foreign exchange, allow a more equitable distribution of currency throughout the economy and ensure stability
The removal of all foreign exchange controls
The hope for the restructuring of the US$800M national debt
Once and for all, to put order where necessary and doing away with wastage and abuse.
A culture of hard work where :every able-bodied Seychellois works, tolerance is not mistaken for laissez-faire attitudes, privileges are not arrogated as rights, where compassion does not degenerate into abuse.
An opportunity to stop blaming the past, to turn a new leaf and work to modernise Seychelles;
Implementation of a modern taxation system that is uniform and simple;
An audit of the biggest companies operating in Seychelles to allow for points of references to ascertain true and correct declarations of revenue and improve on revenue collection;
The removal of subsidies on certain (unspecified) basic commodities and services; The re-adaptation (by as yet unspecified means) of the education system to better meet emerging needs and respond to the challenges of our economy;
To provide SCRs R25,000 to each primary and secondary school to help the most needy children ;
The reorganisation (by means unspecified) of the national health care services to increase our resources and to better utilise the available infrastructure to enable the public to benefit from a higher standard of care.

That’s it!

The Presidential Address seemed to have been more mired in rhetoric than in heeding its own calls for Good Governance , Accountability and Transparency.
It was not forthcoming on the most vital information regarding the type and modality of fund assistance the country sought from the IMF for the Reform Program to address what the IMF called the “problem of acute balance of payments and public debt crisis, (….) which jeopardizes living standards and economic development. “
(Source: http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2008/pr08267.htm)

Economic Reform and Political Popularity are not good bedfellows. Dishing out money while preaching austerity just does not seem to rhyme.

I fail to see the IMF jumping on the Seychelles 2008 Macroeconomic Reform Program without specific agreements of economic restructuring.
The measures announced, other than floating the rupee, do not seem to add up to a rat’s piss worth on economic restructuring. They could be achieved without the IMF’s involvement.
For the IMF, the World Bank, the EU and the African Development Bank, to come over together in a concerted effort and bail out the country, there must have been specific agreements, with firm, fresh financial input.

Similar agreements most certainly have been reached with the still rather opaque “bilateral partners and certain friendly countries”.

What are these agreements and what do they entail for the country and future generations further down the road?
These are, in my view, the real questions that beg to be answered.

The President would have done better to come clean and closer to transparency by providing facts about the commitments taken rather than attempting to distract the nation from the realities gathering on the national socio-economic horizons.

For example, why even bother to raise the subject of abuse and wastage in the context of the economic reform program? His predecessor proclaimed and ostensibly waged his war on these beastly things nearly every year since 1977!
If 25 years down the road we still have to fight abuse and wastage in the public service, then clearly the conclusion seems to be that the country was not waging the right war and has missed its target completely. Perhaps we failed to understand that abuse and wastage of public assets derive from the culture of “mwan ki la” and cronyism where, at least for the nomenclature, priviledges were indeed synonymous with rights and went far beyond the usual scope of issues such as executives who uses GoS vehicles for private purposes.!!

Why did the president have to go further and insult our intelligence in seeking to dull local public opinion about the quality of grass in other pastures!
“ Poverty is being felt everywhere, including in America and in Europe. Recently, we saw on our television screens people queuing up in Australia for certain commodities. “
His speech-writer must be reminded that poverty in so-called rich countries has been around since before JC did his thing! This neither justifies nor makes it acceptable. Poverty being merely a socio economic reality where, because of the accepted (selected) wisdom that direct national policies, some survive better than others. The rich and the poor…get it?
There really was no need to add colour to the presidential address by throwing out this bone of dubious worth. What are we supposed to say? Oh good!!! We are not so badly off, after all!!??

While on petty issues, does anyone take note that cost of fuel and living in some countries have dropped since the last few months? In France, it went down by at least 17% (SP95 from 1.49€/L in July to 1.24€ in November) and (according to recent news reports) living costs barely nudged beyond 6% in the EU. Some basic commodity costs at retail outlets seem even to be dropping!

Pointing these out is not so much to contradict the President, as to offer a different angle in viewing the same reality resulting from the recent global speculation that both drove fuel costs through the ceiling and partly ushered in the current global confidence crises in international finances, investment and economies.
In my view, what the country needed to hear was more on specific programs that the Government would put in place to facilitate the creation of wealth. If the country is bankrupt or was near to it, a few million faces of Benjamin Franklin, however welcome they may be, will be unlikely to provide us with a long enduring recovery!

Like in any other country, a President, by advisers, professionals and technicians interposés, has his fingers on the national socio economic pulse and realities. Whether or not he is able to correctly interpret what he feels and has the capacity to offer a proper diagnosis and treatment course, remains to be seen.

In the meantime his patient will probably groan and suffer some more and may do better to seek a second opinion!

Happy Seychelles, paying less for fuel than Europeans! (WHAT?)

2008-05-23T03:46:00.000-07:00

Don’t you just love the frequent misinformation published in the Seychelles’ daily newspaper, Nation?

Take this little titbit in today’s contribution under Commodity Trading on the International Market -Fuel price comparison- Seychelles and Europe

Norway and the United Kingdom are major oil producers in Europe, yet the prices of fuel at the pumps in the two countries are higher than in import-dependent Seychelles.

The prices of petrol (bennzin) and diesel in Seychelles now are R11.50 and R12.00 a litre, respectively.

In Norway petrol costs R22.10 a litre. Diesel is R21.68 a litre.

Motorists in the UK are charged R20.12 for a litre of petrol, and R19.10 for a litre of diesel.

Petrol costs the equivalent of R18.92 a litre in Germany. Diesel costs R17.44 a litre.

There! It’s official. In black and white print! The Seychellois can be grateful to be paying less for fuel. Why complain of high costs when even the Europeans are forking out more for the same commodity?

Now, I really do not want just to bash away at the bloke who is earning his keep by churning out such rot! But it really is annoying to find, in this day and age, such cheap propaganda! Classic misinformation inherited from a not-too-distant-and-still-quite-present past.

However useless it might be, the Nation needs a dose of reality.

If one were to make a comparison of what it actually costs in terms of percentage of the purchasing power of the EU countries cited and Seychelles, one would conclude that the Seychellois have every right to be concerned over cost at the pumps!

Let us extrapolate a minimum monthly wage in the three EU countries mentioned on a basis of a 38hr/week, bearing in mind that there are no legal limits for same in Norway and Germany

This minimum wage would be approximately €1761 monthly in Norway, (on the basis of 92K/hr and an exchange rate Kr : € of 0.126), €1053 in the UK (on the basis of £5.52/hr and £ : € rate of 1.25), €1310 in Germany and €166 in Seychelles. (I am using an approximate exchange rate of Rs.15 to the € and a Seychelles’ monthly minimum wage of Rs2500)

The purchasing power of the three EU countries is thus 6 to 10 times that of Seychelles.

For a Norwegian, the cost for a litre of petrol represents 0,08% of his monthly wage.

For the Seychellois, the same litre of fuel is 5,75 times more expensive, at 0,46% of the monthly salary.

In other words, while the Norwegian can purchase over 7L of fuel for an hour’s work, the Seychellois, for his hour of work, can only buy 1,43L of fuel. Five times less! It is four and three times less in comparison to a German and Briton.

Then of course the comparison will not be complete without considering the number of times the Seychellois driver has to fill up as opposed to the EU driver.

Indeed, inter-city / state car usage in the EU (or any other large country with well-developed road infrastructure) is more fuel - efficient over longer travel distances and higher speeds (say 5L/100km at speeds 90-120km/h) and fairly low gradient roads, compared to the less fuel-efficient travel in Seychelles (say 8-11L/100km at below 60kmh) and comparatively steeper gradients. Thus the recurring anguish each time a Seychellois checks in at the filling station.

This is the reality Nation would blissfully ignore and would keep from its readers!

It is also, in my view, the reasonable and bias-free way to make any comparison at all between fuel (or any commodity) costs in EU and Seychelles (and anywhere else for that matter)

The Nation would perhaps do best, in the greater interest of informed journalism, to avoid the pitfalls of cheap brainwashing of which a certain local leader was so fond, when he recurringly and proudly compared Seychelles' GDP to those of some selected poor African nations, and in that comparison, finding cause for some self-congratulations in our country being economically sound and prosperous!

Happy and comfortable delusions! The one-way road to economic inertia and the abyss!

Unless it is all part of a cynical and cunningly devised strategy to maintain social peace as well as control over the populace by systematically dishing out cheap misinformation. Big Brother is Wise. Big Brother knows what he is doing. Trust in Big Brother.

Let Me Out!!!

Can We Give Planet Earth A Chance?

2008-04-15T08:22:00.000-07:00

Since her coming into being some 4.5 billion years ago, Planet Earth, we have been told, has met and overcome tasking challenges, each as devastating as the other. Some result from her own physical make up when she either spews out her molten innards or shudders from the unrelenting pressure of her rigid tectonics. Others result from cataclysmic encounters in her ride through the not-so-empty space, around her solitary sun.

For millions of years she endured the transformation that each challenge brought. Her landmasses moved away along her waters, crunched against each other, sank below or rose from beneath her waters. Her solid ground has seen awesome waves rushing in from the sea, rivers come and go, arid desert replace fertile soil, solid ice flows scraping down her mountains to the sea and her rocks worn down by the winds.

Through each of these testing moments, Planet Earth has sustained and nurtured that most fragile existence that came from her very air and soil: Life!

It is a living, breathing creation forever locked in the recurring transitory passage from existence to oblivion and though easily snuffed by any of the little or major upheavals Planet Earth has faced, has found in itself, the formidable ability to adapt and survive, and by virtue of successful evolution, to proliferate.

And yet today, this Life that has endured through millions of years may be at an unprecedented crisis. Having borne uncounted species all clustered together and competing for space, food, and security, Life allowed one species to rise above every other to exert the right of domination and access to her bounties.

Today, this new powerful species has spread to every corner of Planet Earth, and doing so, has, perhaps inadvertently, disturbed the self – regulating density pressures of species’ co-habitation.

The flow of rivers has been modified with structures erected to water new and increasingly large cultivations, provide the necessary energy to feed homes and industries or facilitate transportation.

The very bowels of the earth are gouged and scraped to release minerals and fossil fuel to feed industries and combined to meet the needs of material comforts.

Often driven by an unquenchable cupidity, this species has turned the very lungs of the planet into grazing and cultivation, chewing up the trees into paper, burning them in household cooking stoves, when they are not turned into furniture or consumed in industries’ furnaces and all singly or combined, enhancing the girth and lining of individual and corporate purses.

The guarded secrets of the natural occurring forces of magnetism, electricity and their frequencies were penetrated to offer limitless pathways of discovery and innovation towards eliminating the constraints of distances between isolated groups, facilitating exchanges and more and more engineered to directly lead to what is perceived as improving the immediate quality and comfort of living.

All these were perhaps inevitable in the normal scheme of things which demand that each species take from his environment the substance to ensure his existence and survival. However, the modern-day character of human life and activity has now been shown to be a direct cause of what may very well be an unprecedented challenge to Planet Earth’s capacity to sustain the life she brought forth. Mankind’s households, industries and factories are spewing forth wastes that the soil and atmosphere may no longer be able to sustain.

The accumulation of noxious gases in the atmosphere is apparently directly contributing to amplify the domino ‘green house’ effect. The global modifications in temperature lead to disruptions in air mass circulation and air systems’ regulatory storm cycles, meltdown of polar ice caps, rise in sea-levels, change in climate zones, disruption of rain patterns, spread of desert, etc.

Urbanisation and industrial production are placing considerable pressure on waters and soil.

Their combined pollution is causing irreversible breaks in the eco-system.

Fauna and flora succumb to the unrelenting pressure and are condemned to the now increasing list of extinct species when they are not individually propelled along the peculiar path of evolution and adaptation to disrupt the eco-system, like the spider crabs from the artic, the giant jellyfish of the yellow sea or the taxifolia in the Mediterranean are doing.

Disruptions in climate change disturb weather patterns. Habitats are destroyed from wild fires, inundation of fertile zones or desertification, forcing people no longer able to grow their own food into suburban ghettos in droves.

Safe areas, arable land, water supply are now scarce assets and are covetously guarded. They become prime sources for potential intra-national and international strife and conflict.

Global communications reduce and remove boundaries between peoples. They set and spread the standards for material comforts and excite the innate human drive for immediate needs’ satisfaction. Folks driven from a culture of subsistence are more and more squeezed into suburban ghettos where they are conditioned to aspire to the level of material comforts, often unreachable by normal and socially acceptable living norms. The way out is more often the sad and heavy tribute paid in terms of social and personal tragedies from spiralling crime and violence. They often go hungry while watching people eat from the TV set. Sometimes, the land from which they eked their subsistence are taken up by cash and profit oriented multinationals that produce both the TV and the food featured..

Modern life by Mankind is a complex interplay of forces that go far beyond his perception, understanding and control. The need to control his physical environment and the intricate play of morals that drive and motivate his choices, have often seen his best interest, long term sustainable development, as an integral and inseparable part of the symbiotic eco-system, sacrificed on the altar of short-term goal satisfaction translated into personal cupidity and comfort.

It takes little, well-intended, imagination to recognise the significant part of this cumulated sacrifice in the equation of both global socio-economic developments and the hunger riots now taking place in several countries. We are being made to be the involuntary witness of the destruction of the very fabric of the society modern man has woven, notwithstanding that, with regards to both development or under-development or hunger riots, some individuals or groups may be blowing on the flames of discontent or opportunities for their own short-term political or economic and when taken separately, conflicting agendas. Indeed, the rationale to divert cultivation of food crops to meet the more lucrative needs of industry- these, a by product of the escalating fossil fuel costs (most likely engineered by market speculators), seems to pit the politician against the entrepreneur with the starving populace caught in the middle..

The message seems to be clear. Our life styles have exacted a heavy toll on the fine balance of Planet Earth’s natural forces. The imbalance is probably irreversible in our lifetime and will most likely result, we are told, in a chaotic chain reaction of ever-increasing impact to destroy our very life, before equilibrium is re-asserted, as it surely must have, time and again over millions of years.

When this will happen, maybe Life and Planet Earth will have another chance, perhaps a different choice. One where each species takes from nature only what is required to sustain personal integrity and gives not back more than nature requires. A choice where species will cohabitate without seeking to dominate each other or having to compete for resources. One where each species correctly identifies itself as part of the whole in the complex web of life and recognises that each self-serving disruption in the natural scheme of things will bring along a high cost to pay by future generations.

However remote these concerns may appear when viewed from the limits of our individual and personal everyday horizons, we cannot continue to ignore them.

In a recent moment of strife and conflict, there used to be a rallying call to "Give Peace a Chance"! Are we up to giving Planet Earth a chance ?

Vers Un Boycott du Beijing 2008?

2008-04-09T00:07:00.000-07:00

Un relais international de la flamme Olympique, prélude de la grande rencontre sportive d’été 2008 en Beijing, a vite été accaparé, dés son lancement en Gréce, puis aux étapes Londonienne et Parisienne, par des manifestations et autres revendications politiques au nom des droits et libertés, Tibétaines d’abord, Chinoises et humaines ensuite. Le parcours de la flamme par les autres étapes est d’ores et déjà compromis.

Ce relais qui se voulait celui de l’harmonie et de paix a sombré dans l’ignominie du chaos et le désaveu. Tout un chahut dont le catalyste se prétend être la récente oppression plus que musclée de la Chine, pays hôte des jeux Olympique 2008, des droits et des libertés au Tibet.

D’un coté l’on clame ne plus être en mesure de supporter les abus flagrants des droits et des libertés de l’homme, surtout ceux du Tibétains. La Flamme Olympique s’est donc trouvée, le temps d’un relais organisé par le pays hôte, le symbole de l’oppresseur. Inacceptable dans les capitales de la communauté internationale, bâties sur le respect de la liberté d’expression de l’homme. Pour les besoins de ses politiques à court terme, c’est aussi un bon train à prendre en marche!

De l’autre, l’on prétend que tout cela n’est au mieux, qu’une piètre manigance d’une clique autour du Dalai Lama Tibetain, au pire des actions criminelles des groupes anti-chinoise. De ce point de vue, c’est un peu comme si rien ne s’est passé au Tibet en mars 2008. Il n’y avait pas de manifestations anti-chinoise, l’armée du peuple qui occupe le Tibet depuis 1950, n’a fait aucune intervention sanglante, aucun Tibétain n’est tombé sous les balles pour avoir simplement réclamer ses droits d’être libre chez lui, les 953, chiffre officiel des arrestations, ne sont qu’une petite minorité des fauteurs des troubles, moines inclus. Rien de quoi s’affoler et surtout qui peut toucher au symbole du moment de la gloire de la République Populaire.

Sauf que ce symbole de paix et d’harmonie a prévu son passage en relais sur le toit du monde, l’endroit même ou la Chine exerce son règne d’occupant et d’oppresseur.

La boucle est bouclée. Le sport rejoint la politique. Faut pas trop chercher à les séparer. L’un chasse l’autre quand il s’agit du prestige national, au point qu’ils en sont inséparable.

Je trouve qu’il est un tantinet naïf d’enoblir l’Olympisme. Dés son début, il était un outil entre les mains des habiles hommes politiques, pour canaliser les passions des peuples.

Dans sa version moderne, il s’est trouvé pris en hôtage soit pour la propagation d’une certaine idée de société (Berlin 1936, forte mise à mal par un certain Jesse Owen) soit comme platforme pour internationaliser des revendications autonomiste, (Munich 1972) soit pour dénoncer une certaine hégémonie ou idéologie d’un pays hôte, (Moscou 1980) ou encore en rétorsion (Atlanta 1984).

L’entente, la paix et l’harmonie internationale que représente l’Olympisme restent des valeurs chères à promouvoir. Cependant, tant que l’organisation des rencontres sportives prestigieuses relève du prestige national, la politique s’en mêlera et le sport se trouvera relégué au second rôle.

Le choix du pays hôte se voit ainsi souvent le résultat du marchandage d’influence des pays candidats auprès des pays votants. Ces valeurs qui nous sont chères et à partir desquelles nos démocraties s’épanouissent, deviennent trop souvent une commodité soumise, comme d’autres, aux lois des plus offrants, si elles ne se font pas oublier au fond du placard de nos conscience, au nom de la diplomatie si ce n’est celui d’une politique d’appaisement aux relents d’autruche.

Quand le COI avait attribué les jeux 2008 à la ville de Beijing, en juillet 2001, c’était sur une promesse d’»un monde, un rêve». N’étions nous pas alors tous au courant du bafouement des droits de l’homme en Chine?. Ne l’étions nous pas de la situation au Tibet?. Nous sommes nous posés des questions sur la nature du rêve promis par le pays hôte? Sur qu’il n’y avait aucun remous digne de ce nom pour faire entendre ces voix opprimés sous le joug du communisme triomphant. Pas plus qu’en 1950 au moment de l’occupation du Tibet par la Chine, ni en 1959 et depuis contre l’exile du Dalai Lama en Inde.

Appeler à perturber le rélai international de la flamme Olympique ou aux boycott du Beijing 2008, à quelques semaines des jeux, me semble l’expression d’ une hypocrisie honteuse vis à vis des droits de l’homme en Chine et au Tibet. On en parle, on se crispe la dessus, plus me semble t’il, en résultats des manches à la une des médias occidentaux qui chatouillent nos consciences endormies, que par profonde indignation vis à vis de ce qui se passe en Chine et au Tibet ces dernières cinquante années et plus!

On n’avait pas réagit en 1950 et depuis, contre le déferlement du communisme d’abord en Chine puis au Tibet. Les dirigeants Chinois comptaient-t’ils sur notre passivité?. Tout comme prévoyaient-t’ils la réaction d’une aventure Tibétaine pour assouvir leurs revendications nationalistes et de souveraineté envers Taiwan et l’Arunachal Pradesh?

Le Tibet et le respect des droits humains dans l’empire du milieu on s’en moquait et, soyons honnête, on s’en moque toujours, et on s’en moquerait bien demain, une fois les poussières et nos passions passagères refroidies. La Place Tiananmen, 1989, c’était quoi encore? Un morceau de télé-réalité à vingt heures?

Car, aujourd'hui, on joue le jeux. La Chine est un marché! Les droits de l’homme, s’est une commodité qui se vende et qui s’achète et ce, seulement quand il y en a l’intérêt! Ou quand des médias en mal des manchettes nous les vendent!

Cela dit, peur-être que réagir aujourd'hui c’est mieux que de garder le silence. Peut-être c’est se retrouver et de faire son mea culpa tardif. Tout en sachant que rien, du moins de notre temps, changera au Tibet. Les manifestants gueulent. La Chine oppressive passe!

C’est regrettable qu’un pays comme la Chine, élevée à une certaine grandeur nationale et internationale par son riche passé et cultures, devient victime de sa propre propagande et se laisse sombrer dans la pourriture d’une idéologie qui s’accommode aux besoins du moment pour maintenir aux pouvoir les oppresseurs des peuples Chinois et Tibetains.

Aux Chinois et aux Tibétains de se réveiller un jour et de prendre en main leurs destins. Ils ne doivent pas compter sur l’intérêt et le support soutenu de la communauté internationale.

Are We Serious About Solid, Non-Recyclable Waste Management for La Digue

2008-04-03T08:29:00.000-07:00

The Seychelles' 'Nation' daily of 3rd April 2008 reported on ‘Questions to Government’ of the Seychelles National Assembly (Parliament) session of 2^nd April.

In a question put to Government from the Hon. MP for La Digue island, on the matter of the new landfill for the island, the Minister responsible for Environment and Natural Ressources is reported to have revealed that after further study, none is needed.

What of the La Digue island landfill?

My purpose here is neither to argue in favour of landfills nor to dispute the Minister’s view that a new one is not needed for La Digue. I am merely reacting in what I take to be a reasonable manner to the apparent lack of genuine interest in long – term, practical, ecologically sound management of non-recyclable waste, from both the Government of Seychelles and those supposedly elected to safeguard local community needs and interest.

La Digue is a 10km² granitic island some 43km NE of Mahe, the main island of the Republic of Seychelles.

It is the 4^th largest island of the country, a lush green hump rising to a few hundred metres with its white sandy beaches and rocky coasts lapped by the varying shades of blue of the Indian Ocean, with a permanent population of around 2500 (roughly 3% of the national population) and an economy largely sustained by tourism.

Life and business on the island is however confined to the low-lying, narrow coastal strip that in some areas can stretch to 1 km wide. This density, coupled with problematic storm water drainage, has been an environment-friendly waste management thorn for the island folks.

Waste is collected and if recyclable, shipped to either Mahe or the nearby Praslin sister island for further management. Non-recyclable waste is deposited in the only landfill on the island. Septic tanks and soak-pits, where these occur, manage sewerage from both private households and commerce.

The question put by the Hon. MP for La Digue island is therefore quite pertinent in that it raises concerns over both long – term, non-recyclable waste management and the every day need to maintain the eco-friendly reputation of the island.

However, given that the Hon MP for La Digue island is a member of the ruling party and also Vice Chairman of the La Digue Development Board, which oversees all infrastructure and other developments on the island, one can safely and reasonably deduce that he could not have been ignorant of the situation with regard to the landfill.

Notwithstanding, the Minister called in to respond to the question, would go unchallenged when, in the same breath, he revealed both that the existing landfill will last a maximum three years and that a new land fill is not needed, despite funds having been secured for it from the European Union.

This appears to me to be a gross lack of genuine concern for long-term, sustainable waste management for the island.

The question to Government had therefore probably more to do with making the MP’s own contribution towards filling in the time of Parliament and an unconvincing pretence that he is useful to the island community, and in so doing, reinforcing the perception of how local politicians of the ruling party seem to earn their keep and keep their seats!

For recall, the Government of the Republic of Seychelles received a donation of €3M (say SCRs.36M) from the European Union, to provide for three landfills, including one for La Digue

Now one must admit that the EU does not go about distributing funds to governments of so-called third world countries, without having first received assurances and guarantees that the funds will be used towards the implementation of projects that have been properly assessed.

It boggles the mind that the Minister for Environment and Natural Ressources would blithely admit to a feasibility study undertaken after the country had pocketed the EU checque, revealing that at least one landfill was not really needed after all!

What does this tell you of the seriousness and professionalism with which some public authorities go about their business?

How seriously can one take the Minister’s stance for sustainable, long-term and ecologically sound development for La Digue, when he recognises that the current solid, non-recyclable waste management will endure for a maximum three years but gives no indication of what will be undertaken from then. Three years, that’s in 2011. The groundwork for whatever infrastructure required to take over from the current solid, non-recyclable waste management set-up, needs to be started now!

The ‘Waste free Seychelles’ program, however successful it may be, deals only with the proper management of recyclable waste. Other wastes continue to be produced at the other end of the daily business of living and commerce and still need to be properly managed if La Digue Island is to remain «the pearl of the Seychelles’ crown».

Sadly, the Hon. MP for La Digue (at least his representative, on the day his question was tabled), is not the only one guilty of this blatant lack of interest. None of his colleagues from both sides of Parliament, found it fit to raise the issue further and challenge the Minister to:

a) Ensure that in future, he arranges for serious study of any infrastructure investment projects to determine its necessity, feasibility and sustainability prior to committing scant ressources or reaching out for international donations

b) Come up with a decent, long-term solid waste management plan for the island.

And, presumably, a pro-rata refund to the European Union of the original donation will be too much to ask for!

Wind of Change and The Seychelles Police

2008-03-11T03:36:00.000-07:00

The declarations made by the Seychelles Police Commissioner on Friday 7th March before 65 participants of a two-week workshop on human rights and before “facilitators from the East African Police Chiefs Cooperation Organisation (EAPCCO), the Ombudsman, and senior officials from the police force and the legal profession” and as reported in the Nation of 11th March were startling, at least to me.
· It is only through proper practices in law enforcement that the police force will enhance the
eradication of corruption
· It is sad that the impact of the good work of devoted police officers is lost due to criminal
elements who do not have the public interest at heart
· ( The Police has ) to focus (our) efforts on the fight against corruption equally as we direct
attention on abuses of human rights. They are both detrimental to good governance

Were these borne from his personal and careful appraisal of Policing and his role in ensuring that it is correctly done? Or were they another series of declaration made from reading a speech prepared by someone else, with the aim of uttering the right –sounding phrases and exhorting the right sentiments in interested listeners?

Enhancing the efficiency, professionalism and performance of the Police will not be achieved on the sole declaration of good intentions from good –sounding speeches. It requires a solid knowledge and respect of Laws, Rights, Freedoms, Policing, Procedures and all the other Codes and Good Practices of Professional Policing.

Often enough, we have found this sadly lacking in the local Police Force, from the Police Commissioner himself, down. The Judge Riley report of January 2008 made that clear enough.
In denouncing “criminal elements who do not have the public interest at heart” and who therefore damage the “good work of other devoted police officers”, the Police Commissioner could not have missed the parallel with his own reported inadequacies and incompetence, that combined, contribute to giving the local Police a bad name.

That the Police Commissioner made the right –sounding declarations against corruption and human right abuses as “detrimental to good governance” is remarkable enough! However, one cannot help but be suspicious before the wonderful implications of this declaration.
The implications seem to me to be more than the recognition and acceptance that corruption and abuse of human rights are endemic in the Police Force.

While this is quite remarkable in itself, the declaration also goes further to recognise that eliminating corruption and abuse of human rights “is a basic requirement for peace, security, and sustainable political and socio-economic development”. That’s the bit where I got suspicious.
Things cannot be what they sound to be when a Police Commissioner start talking about stuffs that go far beyond Policing, into the preserves of national policy strategists. To me therefore, the words uttered were bereft of sincerity. They were merely the usual empty –sounding speeches delivered to fill in a moment of formal protocol before a no-risk audience.

But could I be wrong? Of course! There are as many interpretations of what a Public Officer says as there are persons who hear it. In my case, I may have missed the point that the Police Commissioner may just have managed to read the writing on the wall. A writing which seems to be spelling out the end of authority without responsibility so dear to those in office who are yet to be confronted with the need to be accountable for the actions they undertake during public office tenure.
The wind of change is wafting over the land and one can take heart that change will come in our time. The change to accountability, transparency and respect of human rights, on which the President himself dwelt lengthily in his 2008 State of the Nation Address.

If the Police Commissioner missed those messages and was locked into the usual lip-service declarations, then it was a blessing for us all that the Nation carried his statements. We may one day have to repeat his words and invite him to account for himself

Dare We Hope For Judicial Reform In Seychelles?

2008-03-07T00:24:00.000-08:00

The Nation of 07^th March carried the article of Mr Barry Galvin, State Solicitor from the Republic of Ireland, having been appointed by the President to conduct a review of Seychelles’ criminal justice system.

Bravo!

A hum started deep down inside me and I was hard pressed to squash it before it burst into song!

Maybe this time round, Seychelles truly has a chance to move forward. Maybe this time, the new, democratically elected President of the country is seriously committed to break with the past culture of making empty placatory promises!

Law-breakers all over the world would reasonably always find cause to pick a bone with the courts, considering that none of them in prison is guilty of the crime for which they have been convicted. In our land, it would be no different.

But this is not why, for so long, we have regarded our Justice system with suspicion. This suspicion is over the whole Justice system, not only about the criminal justice system.

It is because those appointed to administer justice were, in our eyes, too often pliant to the undeclared wishes of those behind their appointments! To the point that for the average man on the street, in matters of respect of personal rights and freedoms, the courts and the judges were often seen as mere extentions of the ruling party.

And I am not even thinking about land acquisition in the public interest, nor of arrests and detention without due process so characteristic of the years 1977 to late 1980s. Those were years were the legislature gave Ministers legal instruments to do as they saw fit. Judges and courts were thus incapable to correct the perceived injustices.

I am thinking of those years since restoration of multi-party democracy from 1991. We were ostensibly a democracy with a new Constitution in which we had made it clear that the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary were independent of, and were to check and balance, each other.

Except that the Head of the Executive of the 3^rd Republic was a carry –over from the days of single party dictatorship who, while directing the affairs of state, far from addressing the festering cancer in our justice system, blithely contributed to worsening it.

Driving the credibility of government and the judicial system into the ground is probably never close to any political leader’s intent. It more likely arises as the ineluctable outcome of yielding unchallenged power and considering oneself unaccountable. It becomes then a simple step to gather the Legislature and the Judiciary into one’s fist and squeeze or cajole as necessary to maintain one’s hold over the nation

The Head of our Judiciary was, until his recent resignation, the very same who, in his own words uttered at a mid 1990s regional conference held at the Plantation Club on good governance, found no problem with administering the oath of Office of the Presidency during the Single Party Dictatorship period. (to which some delegates quietly snickered ‘ another monkey enjoying nuts thrown at him’. A local participant, now a prominent local politician of the ruling party, quietly laughed and passed on the remark to those who had not heard)

The very same who consistently ruled against petitions and grievances brought before the courts by the political opposition and went so far as to express doubts that the political opposition will ever form a ruling government.

The very same who headed courts which awarded damages to petitions from the ruling clique who found local newspaper articles that exposed their disregard for the law, abuse of authority and priviledge of office, corruption, cronyism, trampling on our constitutional rights and freedoms, etc, as ‘frivolous, offensive, libelous and defamatory’.

The very same who remained silent before the pervading intrusion of the ruling party in the administration of Justice, including perverting the Constitutional Appointments Authority, which until recently and possibly after repeated public denunciation by the political opposition, was chaired by a member of the ruling party’s central committee, also a lawyer who in that latter capacity, thus appeared before Judges he had recommended for appointment.

The very same who remained silent when the head Judge of the Appeals Court resigned in what was strongly suspected as resulting from his vocal stance against unacceptable incursion by the Executive in the Judiciary.

The Country has for a long time been perplexed over criminal activities that remained unchecked. Drug trafficking is a scourge, and drug abuse a plague, in our land. Yet local law enforcement merely succeeds in catching the odd low – level dealers and illicit drug user or occasionally destroying the odd cannabis plantation in some remote part of the island only to see another sprouting up somewhere else.

The barons, who surely must be behind the local drug scene, remain untouched, unknown, and one would dare suggest, not unprotected.

It has happened that law breakers, particularly those who are related to or have connections with the ruling clique, often have criminal cases against them thrown out of court because damning evidence against them disappeared while in police custody (Though it can be reasonably argued that these instances were more the result of the peculiar conditions of appointment of individual police or other officers of the local law enforcement system, and their personal disregard for the law and procedure codes in favour of some immediate and direct pecuniary benefits. That's corruption which pervades law enforcement systems all over the world).

In many ways therefore, and not all of them directly attributable to the person of the Chief Justice, our justice system was seen as flawed and our courts and judges did not always show that they were truly concerned with only providing justice fairly to all. In effect, justice, that inseparable arm of law enforcement, had been rendered, after long being perceived, as ineffective and inefficient.

The effectiveness of any judicial reform will however depend largely on the merit of the assessor. Who he is and how fairly he was chosen, may be indicators to how correctly the assessment will be carried out.

It will also depend on the depth and pragmatism of his findings and recommendations and the strength of the president’s commitment to deliver on his promise for reforms.

It is my hope that in three months’ time, rather than sigh at the Galvin Report, which will join the Rilley report, I can burst into song.

TEAR DOWN THE BARRIERS TO FREEDOM IN SEYCHELLES

2008-02-13T02:47:00.000-08:00

(A brief reaction to the Seychelles’ 2008 State of the Nation Address)

Allow me a minute to take up the three words from the President's State of the Nation address of 12th February 2008: ‘Realistic, Resilient and Responsible’

The President gave his appreciation of these words. I suggest mine.

To be realistic is also to have the physical faculty to look life in the eye without any mental or artificial external filters and recognise it for what it truly is.

Resilience comes from spitting at it in the eye.

Responsibility is to remain resilient when life spits back at you and note it down as another reality to live with.

In Seychelles, we are truly a resilient lot.

For the past three generations, we have endured the difficulties of comparably high living costs culminating in the spectacularly dramatic (average) 50% increase of January 2008.

For the past three generations our reality has been the escalating costs which remained an irksome and often painful thorn in our in everyday life, along with the other political, social and economic iniquities brought upon us by the SPPF Socialist Government, which the President today heads.

For the past three generations, we have often anticipated the State of the Nation address by the one elected in the post to chart and give direction to the course of the nation, for relief from the accumulated burdensome reality.

For the past three generations, we have invariably been disillusioned and assumed our responsibility to be remain resilient.

Since the 1980s, the President of the 2^nd Republic told us every year, to endure sacrifices while the economic course he was charting bear fruits.

In the 1990s, he told us to ‘Ser Sang’!. The fruits were taking longer to ripen!

Since the dawn of the new millennium we were again invited to be patient, the end of all our sacrifices was at hand. The new President from April 2004 took up the chorus, enjoining us to keep the faith.

In 2008, we are invited to remain resilient and face the new challenges.

At each State of the Nation Address, we are informed that the economy is doing well. That investor confidence is good. That visitor arrivals are good and increasing. That more foreign exchange is entering the system. That local entrepreneurship is increasing. That fish and related exports are increasing, etc.

Invariably, the Head of State always fails to see beyond the stale statistics of his advisors and policy makers, to the reality of our daily suffering.

How do these increases percolate down to the average person and translate into a direct impact on improving living conditions?

What is the worth of increasing investor confidence, visitor arrivals, foreign exchange, etc, if after three generations, in February 2008, in the words of the Head of State himself, there are Seychellois families who, despite working very hard, suffer, find themselves in difficulty to cope with household expenses and struggle just to make ends meet?

It is a testimony to our resilience that we have never crumpled, continuing to believe in ourselves, rather than in the empty promises and the blighted vision of the SPPF Government.

The promises of the Government are empty in so far that they have been chorused over the years with little direct impact on slowing escalating cost of living.

The vision of the Government is blighted in so far as it consistently seeks to place the blame for our local dramatic economic burden on others, and now, on the global markets.

It is true that the global market invariably impacts on each and every nation. The current escalating fuel costs are driving up other costs in countries everywhere.

In Seychelles, however, the scale of the recent increases cannot entirely be explained by the global fuel increases alone.

In the EU, lead - free fuel currently sells at €1.33 to €1.42/L at the pump, representing a 20%-30% rise from February 2007. Over the same period, overall commodity price increases have not been above 10%.

In Seychelles, lead –free fuel increased by over 80% from around Rs.6.50 in 2006 to reach Rs.12.00 at end 2007. In January 2008, living costs in our country shot up by an estimated average of 45% to 60%!

It serves little purpose, other than that of cheap misinformation, to compare our local costs with those of other countries, in particular of EU, where the purchasing power is four times that of the average Seychellois.

If, as the Head of State contends, it is true that there is no “short-term solution, nor a magic wand that can resolve the situation”, it is also true that the general local cost of living cannot be entirely dictated by world economic trends beyond our control.

The Head of State gives an inkling of what could be the real cause of our problem when he admits that, true to socialist doctrines, government had for many years, “adopted an approach of absorbing the increasing cost of commodities through subsidies”. This apparently “in view of limited economic growth, and also to help those who were unemployed, or who were attached to specific employment support schemes”.

That, in my view, is where part of the real problem lies.

Since 1977, the SPPF government embarked on a wholesale state welfare program that some saw as more self-serving than a call for popular solidarity. It sought to be and became popular, and to a large extent it remains and seeks to remain so, with abolition of revenue taxation, free health, free education, heavily subsidised and not-low-cost housing, etc. making it political suicide for revision of these policies which have been and are driving the country into a fiscal, monetary and budget policy grave.

The Head of State recognises that “we can no longer sustain such an approach”. His government was apparently confident that it “could make gradual adjustments to subsidies until the country reached equilibrium”.

The unfortunate reality is that the SPPF made the wrong decision at the wrong time.

The Government apparently did not project the immediate and middle-term impact its decision would have on local socio economic conditions! Or if it did, it must have failed to fully appreciate the impact in the other context of globalisation. It smacks of gross economic incompetence not to have foreseen global market pushing up commodity prices and that our local fuel bill would rise by over 300% to erode “the benefits that were gained through improvements in the rest of the economy” to the tune of US$42M.

But can we truthfully equate the heavy burden of increased living costs to solely increased fuel cost?. If adjustments to subsidisation have been gobbled up by increased fuel costs, how fair is it to suggest that subsidisation of commodity costs for 2007-2008 is only worth US$42M?

This amount represents some 25% of the national budget and converts to roughly the amount of excess expenditures under the 2007 budget.

It all seems to point at a lack of foresight, blighted vision on the part of the government with their eagerness to shift the blame onto somebody else and the now well-rehearsed symptomatic strategy of damage control.

What consideration was given to the extra financial burden on “neediest families” when the Government took the decision to hike utility rates by over 60% in January 08.?

In so far as “needy families” are the ones who spend under 300 units of Electricity (translated for the purpose of argument into Kwh), they would have paid Rs207.00 last year and now have to pay Rs138.00 or 66% more for the same amount of energy used.

These are the very same families whom the Head of State now wants to target for relief in paying their utility bills. However, they will still have to fork out Rs.45.00 more (or 28%) without having changed their energy use from last year. Indeed, a Rs 264 utility bill corresponds to around 230Kwh under the new rate of Rs.1.15/Kwh. In 2007, that same energy consumption would have translated into a Rs.158.00 bill. In my book, that’s pathetic damage control.

After all is said and done, maybe there is at last, in the 2008 State of the Nation address, a ray of hope that the barriers thrown up before us over the last 30 years, that have suffocated growth and directly contributed to our current economic straits, will be dismantled.

They were the barriers of state domination in all aspects of social and economic life from interference with the judiciary, disregard and disrespect of human rights, mandatory security clearance for all public service employment (from the mundane, low level no-security risk handyman to the senior executive, or other highly sensitive and high profile posts, and even movement within the public service,) to corruption, rampant cronyism, despotism, that inculcated a mind frame in the nation: Government is Wise. Opposition is useless. Let Government deal with it.

This is the only real message I took from the 2008 State of the Nation Address. I long for the President's words to take form and substance.

When the barriers will have been truly torn down, when the Chief Justice will be truly independently appointed (however unrealistic this may be under the current CAA) when the Police will be truly a professional body and not perceived as a mere extention of the SPPF hierarchy, when any Seychellois secures a job or professional advancement in public and private service on the sole merit of certified skills and competence, when entrepreneurship will be determined by business acumen rather than by political favours (or victimisation), when the SBC will cease to be a propaganda machine, when respect for human rights, despite being written on the pages of the Constitution, will cease being mere words uttered falsely, then maybe, the country will start breathing again. Then, maybe, we can truly start being realistic and look to the future, our resilience strengthening in the hope, that this time, the promised end of sacrifices will be for real.!!

Would that be part explanation for the absence, at the 2008 State of the Nation Address, of the architect of our current woes ?

On Water Saving Measures and Rising Water Bills in Seychelles

2008-01-07T00:20:00.000-08:00

The Nation of 7-1-08 had this article about the Public Utilities Corporation (PUC) stepping up its advice to consumers on realistic and simple methods by which they can conserve water and electricity and therefore save on their bills. This, the article stated, in the wake of the recent revision on water and electricity tariffs forced onto PUC by increased operation costs driven up by the ever rising cost of petroleum on the world market.

The PUC advice, the article states, will hopefully to be available to the public by the end of the week in new leaflets being printed. And to whet our appetites, the Nation doled out a few ‘simple water saving tips’ which included the classic replacement / repairs of leaking taps, toilet flushing systems, etc.

In these days of global concern over renewable natural ressources, everyone is quite obliged to rethink everyday practices that would contribute towards a more sensible use of these scarce resources. It is commendable of the PUC to go that little extra distance in seeking to help its clients reduce water wastage. However, for those of us who really want to do our bit to save on water (the planet will follow in quick order) we would do better to just ignore the PUC and keep on with what common sense dictates.

Indeed, how seriously can one take a public utility agency which suggests that a faulty toilet flushing system can waste water up to 9L/min adding up to 32Kl/month? Or a running tap during teeth-brushing can waste water at 11L/min and goes no further than that?

Firstly, the math is all wrong! On the basis of the faulty toilet flushing system and the bathroom tap running unchecked, 9L/min equals to 540L/hr, equals 12.96Kl/day, equals 90.72Kl/week; equals 362.88Kl/month!

11L/min equals 660L/Hr, equals 15.84Kl/day, equals 110.88Kl/week, equals 443.52Kl/month!

Secondly, it smacks of poor advice on water saving measures to suggest repairs of installations that are fundamentally the way opposite.

A household tap gushing out at 11L/minute is an acknowledgement that the concept for internal domestic plumbing is flawed. Water flow rate for water cisterns, internal taps and showerheads need not deliver more than 6L/min at full flow without compromising on efficiency

If that toilet flush drains at 9L/min, it is faulty in concept, gurgling out water at near double what a toilet flushing should do. It needs to be replaced. Modern dual flush runs at average 3-6L/flush.!

And while we are at it, let’s have reducers and flow restrictors on those other interior water outlets where pressure can be enhanced without increasing the volume of water flow. Sounds simple and practical?

The way I see it, the trouble with the PUC seems to lie in trying to place the blame for the new unsavoury monthly utility bill on customers. They are careless and wasteful, right?

Or on that nasty world market thingy, with its “ever rising cost of petroleum”(however true). As for ol’ PUC, it had little other option than to hike up its rates on water and electricity tariffs ( it was forced to do , right?, Somebody, maybe Government, was bending and twisting its arm to do so in order to meet increased operation costs, right?)

It was certainly commercial sense to hike up the utility rates. Which means that at some stage, what clinched the decision, was more the concern on how to balance the books rather than the plight of the already heavily overburdened Seychellois household.

This is all the more galling in the land of free health, free education, heavily subsidised housing and other generous social welfare programs. We all need water to drink, wash, clean at more or less the same rate, irregardless of social or economic status. The PUC has only made it harder for those of the lower income group. That’s the other reality besides increasing international prices.

The PUC would not really be blamed for having decided the way it did, if only it could now be brave enough and admit it rather than try to suggest that it’s all the fault of the international market.

Now that the rates have been increased, it should try not to add insult to injury by taking the customers for morons in suggesting ludicrous water wastage figures that, if avoided, would “make a world of difference on (our) electricity and water bill at the end of each month “

We may not be able to do without the PUC. We certainly can do without its advice!

WhoTruly Stands For Unfetterred Freedom In Seychelles?

2007-12-05T00:43:00.000-08:00

Freedom and Power

They are not just about ideologies and political philosophies. In our sunny islands, one ideology is as good as another and over the years, ideologies seem to have shown their capacity to adjust to changing local and global socio-economic realities and not least to the unquenchable thirsts of those who wish to drink at the national power fountain.

From a well-tested history of political manoeuvres, those of the SPPF leadership have shown themselves to be particularly adept at building their party into a fortress with wide-reaching powers from which they rule uncontested over the whole nation.

These include control over the legislature, gained and maintained over successive elections since 1993 to 2006, through its majority in the National Assembly won largely through sustained generous state largesse in social welfare programs over the years and outright pre-election vote buying campaigns.

They also have direct control over the judiciary through the statutory Constitutional Appointments Authority,(CAA) ostensibly a forum for political consensus on constitutional appointments, but in reality, a means by which such appointments, including that of the Chief Justice, are seen through by the party –affiliated Chairman named by the President. Then of course, the President appoints all judges to the Magistrates’, Supreme and Appeals courts, with fixed-term (renewable) contracts for expatriate judges and life-term contracts for locals.

The SPPF power sword also swings wide into every other aspect of national life, over and above its rightful mandate as elected government to implement the economic and social requirements of its political agenda, from commerce and trade, utilities, public service, army and police, to information and local affairs.

The strength of the SPPF is however, not always a result of its political adroitness as it is the sum of the weaknesses of its political adversaries.

The major adversary from the 2006 legislative and presidential elections is the Seychelles National Party (SNP) with some 43% of the popular vote.

This vocal political opposition proposes itself, alone or in tandem with the once (pre 1977 Coup d’Etat) formidable Democratic Party (DP), as the champion of democracy and all its concomitant freedoms and rights (of speech, association, press, etc…)

The SNP thus customarily brandishes at the SPPF, labels of oppressor of civil rights, state organised censure of liberties and freedoms and intolerance of dissenting political views.

This has undeniably found a certain appeal among free thinkers in the land and probably, quite explains the comfortable support base of the party.

This support base may however be rattled by the apparent burgeoning, within the SNP, of the same intolerance for dissenting political views and most undemocratic stances when the split of the DP-SNP 2006 electoral alliance was allowed to invade the sacrosanct realms of free press.

Can the SNP honestly look itself in the mirror and see a reflection of the champion for free press after the recent decision for the SNP- controlled Regar Printing to discontinue the printing of its former ally’s publication on the sole grounds of being in disagreement over the content of the latter?

If that is not political censure, then can somebody please lend me a dictionary!!

The SNP and DP may be having their little spat. This is nothing new in the realm of political alliances reached for the needs of convenience and short-term strategies, and would have been largely insignificant, were it not for the obvious questions that it raises over the strength of the SNP’s commitment to democracy and freedoms.

Thus the question is raised. Who really stands to uphold unfettered freedoms in our land? If the SPPF is more intent on retaining and wielding power, is the SNP truly the democratic alternative?

Human Rights in Seychelles : October 2006 Police Repression and the Judge Reilly 2007 Inquiry and Report.

2007-11-16T01:38:00.000-08:00

Call for Radio Freedom

During the mid morning of 3^rd October 2006, a group of supporters of the political opposition, Seychelles National Party (SNP) gathered before the Seychelles’ National Library building, in which premises the Seychelles National Assembly was debating an amendment to the local telecommunications and broadcasting legislation. The substance of the amendment was, in essence, to make it illegal for a political party to have its own broadcasting station.

This legislative debate was taking place in the context of the SNP disputing the independence of the national broadcasting agency, the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC) and allegedly in the process of finalising its plans to apply for a broadcasting licence.

The fairness and freedom from bias of the SBC in presenting the views of all parties on national issues, particularly those of political controversy, have persistently been a matter of partisan debate since the early 1990s.

The gathering had been planned beforehand by the SNP, to essentially petition the President of the country not to assent to the proposed amendment under debate. The latter debate appeared as a perfunctory exercise as the amendment had been tabled by the ruling party which enjoyed a comfortable majority in the National Assembly.

The local Police Force had come to know of the planned gathering, interpreted it as illegal and had mobilised the riot police Special Service Unit (SSU)

Violent repression by the Police

In summary, at around 1000hrs, when some 50 to 100 persons had gathered, the Police requested that they disperse. The crowd called to be addressed by their Leaders.

Mr Wavel Ramkalawan, the SNP leader (also Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly) came out from the debate and engaged discussions with the regular police on site and with the assembled crowd.

The SSU intervened and made to ‘arrest’ Mr Jean François Ferrari, an executive of the SNP leadership. They apparently only managed to beat him up severely and leave him unattended and under no restraint while they sought out others of the SNP leadership.

The Leader of the Opposition was severely assaulted. Others, some innocent bystanders were assaulted, including 63-year old, physically (medically) impaired Gilbert Elisa.

No assistance was provided to the injured. Mr Ferarri and Mr Ramkalawan who, though under arrest, were transported, as were others, by their peers to the Victoria hospital for treatment.

Government disinformation

The country was shocked at the unprecedented display of intransigent and cheap violence. The government-controlled daily newspaper, Nation, in its issue of 6^th October, published a police communiqué which made several claims:

1 While many of the incidences of violence that occurred following this assembly are under investigation, the need to clarify certain events has been highlighted by the misrepresentation of facts in certain press releases emanating from the Seychelles National Party (SNP)

2. Police Officers were following procedures for the search of all persons entering the building which houses the National Assembly to ensure security

3. At 1005hrs the Leader of the Opposition left the National Assembly debate and joined supporters that had grouped outside

4. SSU (Special Support Unit) officers were engaged in containing the crowd at outside the building.

5. An altercation developed between Mr Jean-Francois Ferrari, an SNP executive member, one of Mr. Ramkalawan’s bodyguards, and SSU police officers during which force was used against the SSU. As a result of this altercation, two SSU officers were injured as well as Mr. Ferrari.

6. Mr. Ramkalawan was at this point engaged in conversation with a member of the regular Police at the entrance to the building. As Mr. Ferrari was being arrested, Mr. Ramkalawan punched one of the SSU officers

7. The situation then degenerated into a melee where several people were injured including Mr. Ramkalawan. Mr. Ramkalawan and Mr. Ferrari and a few other people had to be taken to Victoria Hospital for treatment at 1015hrs

8. Investigations continue into the damages caused to property in the town

On the 10^th October 2006 the Nation reported that ‘the President was ‘satisfied that preliminary investigations had shown that the Police had acted correctly and professionally in the handling of (last Tuesday's) incident

The president further expressed the wish that ‘the opposition (renounced) violence publicly since only the highest regard for law and order could guarantee the peace and stability that the people of Seychelles need to progress’

The stage was thus set. As the independent inquiry will later show, local public opinion was, as is customary, being deliberately prepared to accept that on the one hand, the political opposition is bunch of anarchists bent on causing trouble and on the other, that the police is a professional law abiding force concerned only with the upkeep of law and order.

Reaction of the Political Opposition and Independent Inquiry

The political opposition weekly Regar, in its issue of 13^th October, publicly called the Police Commissioner a liar in both making false accusations against the SNP and persons affiliated to the SNP and in misrepresentation of the facts.

Possibly pressured to save the image of the regime, the President ordered a special inquiry into the incident of 3^rd October with a commitment to making public its report.

A judge (retired) from Ireland, Michael Reilly, was appointed to conduct an independent inquiry. The inquiry was duly conducted from January 2007 and the Reilly Report was submitted in October 2007 and made public early November 2007.

The Inquiry Report

I have had a rapid scan through the Judge Reilly Report and I do believe it vindicates the Seychelles Political Opposition

The report seems to highlight a lot of what I have suspected and said all along to any who would care to listen or read, about the partisan-charged bias of my country’s law enforcement and general public service management

If I have a lot of respect for the integrity and professionalism of some individuals within the state apparatus, I must also recognise that they all seem to be imbued with the pervading partisan bias of the ruling party which renders everyone impotent to stand up and speak out against flagrant disregard to both the constitution of the third republic and in particular to respect of our (human) rights as well as to the recurring failure of the national police force to provide professional policing.

While the Judge Reilly Report acknowledges under chapter 8, that on the 3.10.2006, the SNP did indeed act contrary to the stipulations of the local Public Order Act as it stood then, it may, and probably will, be viewed as overly critical of Government and is ‘sans apel’ on police incompetence across the hierarchy.

The SSU actions unprovoked, unwarranted, unnecessary.
Police Commissioner lied.

Under chapter 7, it rewrites the factual , chronological account of the incident on that inauspicious day, thereby establishing that the Police Commissioner did indeed lie in his communiqué of 6^th October 2006.

Section 7.27 established that SSU officers beat and injured people who were vulnerable and attempting to leave the area and that (the) attacks were unprovoked, unnecessary and unwarranted. No police officer has taken responsibility for these actions, and no attempt has been made by the police at a senior level to establish who was responsible for these actions.

Section 7.28 pointed out that the fact that no police officers have been disciplined for their actions (….) and, indeed, no investigation into the actions of the police on that day has been carried out encourages the view that members of the Police Forces can behave improperly and not be held to account for that behaviour.

The Police: unprofessional, excessive and unjustified use of force

Chapter 9 of the report emphatically refutes the presidential satisfaction expressed through the Nation of 10^th October 2006, of professionalism of the police action and exposes as, at best, gross misinformation, the Police Communique published in the Nation of 6th October

Indeed, section 9.7 clearly establishes an excessive and unjustified use of force by the SSU and under section 9.8, the report calls for the scraping of that unit altogether from under the Police and for public order policing functions to be exercised by the regular police with all police officers receiving appropriate training for policing public events with an emphasis on negotiations, the implementation of a graduated response, and a particular focus on respect for human rights

Police Commissioner and Senior Management Team: Incompetent

Section 9.14 of the report is an unambiguous recognition of Police incompetence, and for the Police Commissioner and his senior management team, it is a list of their personal and combined failures. ‘..evidence adduced at the Inquiry points to a number of critical failures on the part of the Commissioner to deliver a proper policing service on the day’ failures which the report concludes, ‘are endemic defects in the (Seychelles) Police Force.’

Section 9.14 goes further to list the minimum skills and experience requirements for the Police Commissioner and his senior Management team and pointedly spells out that they should have no political affiliation other than exercising normal political franchise. It goes on to make the crowning humiliating list of key competency fields that the Police Commissioner should have.

In the ensuing chapters it clearly calls for the independence of the SBC and for a greater respect of human rights.

The pervasive police incompetence we have known since June 1977

Judge Michael Reilly comes from a democratic country with a history of accountable and professional policing. It is to his credit that, in judging the local policing structure and conditions for respect of human rights, he seems to make allowances for the local system’s comparative inadequacies. He does not seem to be judging our local system on the basis of what takes place in his country.

Be that as it may. He was judging an incident, which occurred within a few hours, one day in October 2006 and concluded that on that day, the Police failed the nation it is supposed to ‘serve without favour, malice or ill will’ when its SSU officers launched ‘unprovoked, unnecessary and unwarranted attacks’ against a peaceful gathering and ‘beat and injured people who were vulnerable and attempting to leave the area’.

What Judge Reilly may not be aware of is that the country has, since 1977, been exposed to the pervasive incompetence and ineffectual policing of its boys in blue and others, armed, in khaki..

The SSU that Judge Reilly condemns in his report, we as a people, have been condemning for the past 30 years as ‘Gard Baté’ under its various guises .

In any open and democratic society, the Police Officer who carries out unwarranted assaults on unarmed and peaceful citizens must bear the criminal responsibility for his actions.

In our country, notwithstanding that no responsibility is ever borne, it is one that is also shared with the system which, since the violent coup d’etat of 1977, ushered in a mentality of violent repression of political dissent.

The SSU and its precursors, all partisans of the ruling party, became our local ‘tonton macoutes’, intimidators ready to wade into any crowd of suspected political opposition and to indiscriminately dispense violent repression, certain in the knowledge that none of them would ever be held accountable, once it is established that their actions was to quell political dissent. To object or in any other way, express opposition to the policies and practices of the Seychelles Government since 1977, is to invite on your head the full wrath of 'the people' through its police or army.

The hallmark of the regime then, and to a large extent, now, is to instil fear and acquiescence in a peaceful nation. Professional policing does not seem to have ever been of particular concern.

Career policemen have been routinely pushed aside to allow those with less qualifications and experience into the top leadership slots. Just a few months ago, the whole police leadership, including Officers with long years of service, proven qualifications and competence, was sacked by a Police Commissioner who felt that his senior officers were not competent!!.

The sacked officers pressed charges for unlawful dismissal and were vindicated in court. In time, the Police Commissioner, Andre Kilindo, whose qualification for appointment into the post seemed to have had more to do with his political affiliation than to policing qualification or experience, was given the golden handshake. He was replaced, in August 2006, by the current Commissioner who was a senior officer in the army, also affiliated to the ruling party and whom the Judge Reilly report now finds is totally unfit for the job through sheer incompetence and lack of qualification.

The army was routinely called in to euphemistically ‘assist’ the regular police in basic duties such as search and arrest of wanted felons or criminal suspects. Rules of engagement seemed to be ill-defined. Armed police personnel, in or out of uniform, often make use of their arms to intimidate unarmed, peaceful citizens. During the period 2004 to 2007, there were at least seven reports of police officers making use of their weapons in the pursuit and arrest of suspected felons or escaped prisoners, at Cote d'or Praslin, Curio Road, Les Mamelles and Port Glaud, resulting in six grievous bodily harm and one fatality. The latter case occurred in the evening at Port Glaud in proximity to the residence of one Robyn Henriette, principal suspect in a break-in which occurred at the Ste Anne Island resort late 2004 or early 2005. The Police was ostensibly trying to arrest the man.

There has not been any serious investigation into any of these incidents. Not many had the gumption to stand up and demand the right to due process under the law, even for convicted criminals. Those who did speak out for respect of human rights, democracy and police accountability were publicly tagged as pursuing a warped political agenda or merely seeking to score cheap political points, in favouring the criminals.

The pervading feeling has been that, the police officer, or soldier, is absolved of all blame and responsibility for any action, however unwarranted and illegal it may be, if it was executed in accordance to the tacit or implicit wishes of the authorities.

And to crop it all, within a few days of the violent, unwarranted police action of 3^rd October 2006 against peaceful, unarmed citizens, the authorities publicly thanked the incompetent but totally loyal officers, in recognition of their ‘professional competence’. A number of them, was promoted, amongst whom the most notoriously incompetent Police Officer, chief of the ‘Gard Baté’ (SSU), promoted from Superintendent to Chief Superintendent. The very same officer who was found guilty by the courts for unwarranted assault in 2003 on a citizen, brave enough to press charges. The very same who epitomises political partisanship and police brutality on our peaceful shores

The promotion in itself was a clear demonstration, if ever any was needed, of how career advancement in the Police depends more on blind political loyalty rather than proven competence in effective policing

In so far as these, among other positions vindicate the SNP’s claims of pervading political bias and unfairness of the local set-up, the Judge Reilly Report will therefore probably add to the local apathy when it joins other reports, unattended, gathering dust and forgotten, because it simply spells out to Government what most free-thinkers have been observing and saying over the past 15 years :

That the full and unconditional respect of democratic principles, and the rule of law, must be ensured for the government to deserve the democratic label.

That the national police force is incompetent, from its head right down to the cop on the beat, largely due to a combination of political bias, improper training and lack of qualifications.

That respect of human rights in the country, if enshrined in the constitution of the third republic of 1993, is too often left at the whims of those who yield undisputed power in the land.

That there is a pervasive partisan-inspired mistrust between politicians on both sides of the local scene that, too often, are tacitly encouraged to degenerate into petty violence and occasionally influence decisions that threaten national peace and stability.

That the ruling party and incumbent government persistently fail to come to terms with these painful, everyday realities that so plague our land and remain the cause of so much unnecessary suffering and pain.

Will We Ever Wake Up And Take Heed ?

While this is to be hoped for, it is not unreasonable to expect it will not happen. Notwithstanding, I have taken due note of what may be a glimmer of hope in the long-suffering history of political bias in our land.

The President and the Leader of the Opposition have, this month started what may be a series of official consultations. Seeing that they both desire democracy to flourish in our land, maybe they will see the wisdom in seeking a way to work together, without compromising their respective political agendas, for the benefit of our motherland.

This said, maybe it is too much to hope for, too soon. But the least that should happen is for the Police Commissioner to resign, as any self self-respecting person in his position should, though he is not solely to blame to find himself unqualified, incompetent and inexperienced and in a highly sensitive and demanding position.

GOOD GOVERNANCE IN SEYCHELLES

2007-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Mr James Michel, President of Seychelles, is reported by the Seychelles daily newspaper, Nation of 5-10-2007 to have exulted at Seychelles having scored 2nd place on the 2007 Mo Ibrahim Index on Good Governance for 2005 of 48 sub-sahara African countries !

‘Every Seychellois who has their country at heart should be proud that Seychelles has been recognized at an international level as a leader in good governance’ he is reported to have stated.

“But this does not mean that everything is right and that we must rest on our laurels. We have to continually improve on our successes so that our governance record becomes the best, and this we can achieve if we all work together,”

He apparently aims to ‘create a modern Seychelles with a strong economy as well as engage in an “active” diplomacy on the international scene so as to further highlight the country’s attributes to the world.’

Coming out ‘second best governed country in Africa’ as the Nation puts it is indeed cause for pride in being a Seychellois.

In that regard I fully agree with the President. He has every right to exult because, let’s face it, he does represent the whole country, and the ranking reflects to a large extent, the policies and programs of the Government he heads!

I also agree with his reported comment that not everything is right.

Indeed, if he truly aims to make Seychelles the best governed country in sub-Saharan Africa, he must therefore focus attention on those areas where the 2000, 2002 and 2005 reports showed consistently low scores.

If the 2007 Mo Ibrahim Index were to be compared to a school report card, then Seychelles as a student was following a course on Good Governance comprising some 56 subjects in 5 main modules. In matters of good governance, a score below 80% is not good enough! The aim must be to be closer to 100%.

Student Seychelles therefore performed excellently with scores of 100% in 25 subjects ranging from press freedom to health matters, road networks, literacy, armed conflicts, opposition participation in elections, to respect of physical rights, etc.

Student Seychelles performed well with scores of 80%-99.9% in 14 subjects ranging from Health matters to the Judiciary, Education, Internet usage, to some aspect of the national economy, etc.

In these areas, one recognises the dogged determination of the professionals that pushed the country forward despite the often hard and intimidating local conditions.

In 10 subjects however, where scores range from 30% to 78.5%, student Seychelles needs to seriously get to work in order to improve on performance and achievement. Of particular attention is the subject respect for civil rights where the poor score of 30% is unchanged since 2000 whilst first - placed Mauritius scored 100% and 90% respectively

Of similar concern is the subject of GDP per capita growth that has plummeted from an average 52.8% in 2000 to the current 34.1%. Whilst first – placed Mauritius scored 50.5% in 2000, 47.4% in 2002 and is currently at 52.4%

There is no reason why student Seychelles should fail to achieve top scores for subjects of Free and Fair Elections, (50%) Levels of Violent Crime, (50%) Public Sector Corruption (52%), and Independence of the Judiciary (78.6%).

Student Seychelles was not rated for some 7 subjects ranging from electrical outages per year to % of 15-49 years old living with HIV.

Most of the areas of low scores fall directly in the presidential lap.

They are known and have consistently pervaded the national efforts for transparency and good governance over several years.

They have been the core of grievances from the opposition and the country at large. We do not need the Mo Ibrahim Index to re-confirm it for us.

However, this having been done, and the President deriving obvious satisfaction from the trustworthiness of the report, he has therefore the remaining years of his current presidency to both maintain current levels of good achievement and also to ensure:

1. Respect for civil rights

2. Free and Fair Elections

3. Lower levels of Violent crime

4. Eradication of Public Sector Corruption

5. Full and effective Independence of the Judiciary

6. Better GDP per capita growth.

It is a pity that his advisers seemed not to have fully briefed him on the whole extent of the report. He would have deduced that priority areas for better scores are not a strong economy (however vital this one may be ) nor active diplomacy!

Seychelles and large-scale commercialisation of forged pharmaceutical products?

2007-10-03T01:57:00.001-07:00

Is Seychelles truly a new haven for large-scale commercialisation
of forged pharmaceutical products?

I was following a peak time news report on a main national TV channel in this EU country! Right in there with the other news was the one about fake pharmaceutical products that were reportedly flooding the so-called third world countries and even some EU states!

The news report deplored that some Asian countries such as India, were at the forefront in large –scale industrial forgery of everything from upscale clothing, software, food products to pharmaceuticals

Of the latter, the new rage is for so-called generic products that are selling over the net at prices that defy competition. And the best selling is the little miracle blue pill! Except that the blue is only a dodgy paint-job imitating the Viagra pill, but is unlikely to contain Sildenafil Citrate or any of the other active agents for Tadalafil or Vardenafil.!

I was about to go ‘ so what, the world is full of shysters out to make a fast buck,’ when the reporter revealed its bomb-shell, right there before its trusted millions of viewers.

The Seychelles is among the countries harbouring Indian companies, which commercialise fake Viagra pills over the net.

The report produced a net screen clearly showing the name ‘Seychelles’. I noticed an URL on the page shown and wanted to check it out for myself.

The site claims to have been “established since Feb 2005,’ and to be ‘one of the most affordable and reliable online pharmacies, … dedicated to bringing you a range of generic pharmaceuticals at reasonable prices and from reputable manufactures.

We are located in Seychelles and have several shipping locations around the world in order to satisfy the needs of our customers

To me, the site is quite innocuous and there is not much to distinguish it from the millions of others doing business over the net, if not for the lack of a Seychelles’ local address and a contact phone N° that could place its office anywhere between Kamtchatka to Timbouktou. It is child’s play for a company that wishes to operate behind the anonymity of the net to write up a web page and give a bogus location.

Except that French authorities seem to have managed to lay hands on some of the pharmaceutical products the company had sold to some EU pharmacies.

The Viagra and other products were all fake! EU pharmacies were conned by carefully planned marketing con-jobs, including substitution of de-activated products codes.

That’s for the news report! And it had to be featured a few hours after Mr. James Michel, President of the Seychelles had met his French counterpart, Mr Nicholas Sarkozy!

I was saddened that my beloved country had to be named as part of the ring of cyber-crime, though there was no proof that the company targeted by the news report is actually based in my homeland

Notwithstanding, Seychelles' national authorities should be diligent in assessing the merits of companies registered to do business from our shores. The world must know that it is not only our natural landscape that is pristine and attractive. So must be our national pride and conscience, and we must strive never to lose these to base cupidity in the quest to fill the national coffers!

2007-09-19T02:09:00.000-07:00

Seychelles National Assembly:
Trading Democracy against Preservation of Political Stability?

Doesn’t it make you sometimes wonder whether the Seychelles National Assembly deserves to be considered as a serious national institution? Perception of the importance of its vital role seems to me to be recurringly affected by what appears to be overly petty debates.

Such a feeling arose when I read of the Nation’s reporting of 19^th September 2007, of an intervention made by no less than the Vice-President of the country, albeit in his capacity as Minister for Internal Affairs, in response to a question raised by the Honourable Leader of Government Business.

This most honourable member of the House would have the nation believe that it is a matter of national importance for the House and the country to know how much it costs the national Police Force each time it is requested to assist in events of a political nature.

And the VP obliged!!. SCR 40,000.00 to SCR 60,000.00, to mobilise and maintain at operational level, some 250 to 300 officers, he revealed!

Not to assist however, but to watch over the event.

Not only the event itself as it takes place, but much before it even gets going!

And this involves not only the Police, but also the army, which is sometimes called in and placed on standby to assist the police in case the event should run out of control and turn violent, he declared!

And, lest the House and the country fail to remember the usual chorus line, the VP had to throw in the ‘negative effect’ political events may have on the country’s image as a tourist destination!!!

I daresay the Honourable Leader of Government Business is as much interested in the matter she raised before the House as she is with her first set of bloomers! Her query seems more directed at some vague political aim of painting groups who hold political events as irresponsible in both squandering national resources and sullying the national pristine tourism image!

Could it be that the Honourable lady failed to take note that squandering national resources is also evident when an SCR8,000.00 a-month Hon. member of the Assembly takes time to prepare and send her questions; for the Clerk of the Assembly to draft and forward same to the competent Executive Authority; for the august office of the Vice President to mobilise his personnel for research and response and to organise his schedule to include presence in and response to the Assembly? Did anybody bother to research the costs involved? Probably not! Because it would be quite un-called for and serving only the cause of pettiness! Just as the Hon. LoGB’s question.

It is possible that both the Hon. LoGB and the VP were too taken in by their role to use the Assembly as a forum for free public education (sic!) that they seemed to have missed a few vital points, and thereby failing to truly and correctly educate the people!

One is that the Police Force in any country is always mobilised when any event, which is likely to cause a crowd or assembly, is scheduled to occur in a public place. The mobilisation is necessary both to uphold the rights of free assembly and to preserve and protect the public peace! As with everything undertaken by a public authority, there is a price tag, which is borne by the operational budget. This is true for all police forces in the world. Just as true as it would be irresponsible for any national public authority to shirk this duty.

Another point is the democratic right enshrined in the constitution for freedom of assembly. This right is neither for dogs nor for anarchy. In all democracies of the world, free citizens make just use of their right to assemble together and press for redress of whatever they may perceive as grievances. It would be a denial of their right and a mockery of the constitution if, the Police were to fail in their responsibilities, over a matter of resources squandered!

Yet another point too often missed is that if Seychelles is deservedly a truly magnificent and world-renown tourist destination, its patrons, in their vast majority, come from countries with well-established democracies. Countries where, as private citizens, they enjoy the rights and freedoms they would want to see everywhere they go.

Just as they could be disturbed, in their own country, by an assembly turned ugly, so they would be anywhere else. None would however, make the link between democracy, rights and freedoms and the preservation of the tranquillity of their favourite holiday destination.

We must not do so for them!

We must guard from trading our rights and freedom against preservation of what some considers as political stability to entice tourists! Both are beyond value to us!

We should be simply allowed to embrace all our rights and freedoms in a civilised and peaceful manner and never find cause to feel threatened by the state whenever we exercise those rights!

And therein lies the trouble.

The incumbent Government of Seychelles seems to go paranoid whenever the country takes a path that could lead to truly embracing freedom! This threatens their power hold on the land! Thus the police force, most of the regular and the whole of the para-military (how else can one count up to 300?) and the military are called in, sometimes to intimidate, at other times to directly intervene and deny the rights and freedoms given by the constitution! The October 2006 incident around the National Assembly, is an illustration of the latter!

2007-09-13T05:27:00.000-07:00

Seychelles Government’s August 2007 Public Service Restructuring Exercise:

How much of it is really ‘Answering the people’s call ‘

Excerpts from the 'Nation' daily newspaper of 13^th September 2007:

…….President James Michel has said that the government’s ongoing restructuring programme is in effect answering the call of the population for a government that is more efficient and accountable. He also noted that in his consultations with the private sector, the need for a more responsive and less heavy government had consistently been on the agenda.

….(the) restructuring exercise (……) was aimed at a leaner and more efficient government, “a Government that is not intended simply as a means of employment for as large a portion of the population as possible, but rather a Government which is a true facilitator”. Government restructuring “had been a cry on the lips of our population for a while now”, and that the question of Government efficiency was a key debate during consultations that he had had in the districts. “Members of the public have demanded that government be more accountable. And so they should, it is their right as citizens that the civil service be accountable to them,” “Efficiency and performance are the benchmarks. We have long assumed that a Government job is for life. But we have to move forward and ensure the implementation of a true meritocracy

“Some ministries have bloated up over the years without necessarily maintaining their efficiency or becoming more efficient. Similarly, some ministries had two or three departments, sections or units performing more or less the same functions. As a result of this, things got stalled or were duplicated,” President Michel said.

“It is better to have only one unit or section who performs efficiently and makes things move and that those people who are made redundant in this downsizing exercise are redeployed in other workplaces where they can be more productive,”

Describing as “hypocritical” the actions by some people to melodramatise the redundancy issue, President Michel said that only 56 people so far had been made redundant and that the majority of them were being assisted in efforts to have them redeployed in the productive or private sectors. (Nation 13-9-2007)

Ok! Let’s try to get behind the cant and rhetoric.

Government of Seychelles is the single most significant employer in the land.

The public sector answers to the needs of a service – oriented administration. Added to this public sector are the not insignificant personnel from the 35-odd organisations of the parastatal sector and other national authorities, ranging from tourism regulation, training, civil aviation, banking, marketing, trade and commerce to housing and Island development, amongst others.

In so far as the current Government is a successor to itself since the coup d'etat of 1977, it can reasonably be argued that it has, over the years, and despite recurring past restructurations, created the bloated public service that, it seeks yet again today to restructure. If this time round restructuring may indeed be a necessity, how true can it be that it ‘answers the call of the people’?

To restructure means to organise differently. In our local public administration context, this has implied, as can be expected, dismantlement or reorganisation of ministries, with the inevitable and well-announced aim of making them more efficient but with no prior warning of the resulting redundancies.

How did the people make this call?

Was it not answering the people’s call when, over the years, Government initiated public service schemes one after the other to bolster employment? On the lower end of the employment scale, we had the Full Employment Scheme, the Youth Entrepreneurial Scheme, the District Beautification Scheme, to name a few. On the upper end, we had ministries frequently re-organised with new departments and divisions with new Principal Secretaries, Director Generals, Directors and Managers, along with their plethora of lower echelons technocrats and bureaucrats. All these were aimed at answering the call of the people for an efficient public service.

The persons who are today justifying the need to trim down the public service and avoid duplication are, by and large, the very ones who, over the years, directly took part in the decision-making process to approve the various re-structuration proposals that led to today’s ailing, bloated and inefficient service.

If the restructurations that have come and gone over the years were all in response to the needs of the people, how can today we tell whether or not the people truly know what they want in terms of public service administration.? Or is it an indication that high level decision makers consistently fail to truly understand the needs and calls of the people and and mask their own incompetence and ineficiency in the guise of restructructuration?

Very often in the past, we have heard various personalities, some well-informed and others far less so, posing as representatives of the people, denouncing the public service as overly bureaucratic!

The people is admittedly justified when it clamours for less bureaucracy! Bureaucracy however is not about getting rid of people. It is about getting rid of the heavy load of regulations and procedures, in order to secure some public service delivery.

However, it is not a simple matter to merely flush away the set of rules and procedures created and approved with the well-intended aim of rendering the public service more efficient and accountable.

It is a tasking exercise to keep tabs on the merit of each set of rules and procedures in efficiently delivering public service against the sometimes unjustified, if understandable frustrations, of those of the community denied a particular desired or promised service for simply failing to qualify for same. In these instances, the public service officer who is applying the rules and following procedures in a professional manner then becomes the target of vituperations, and, in the context of an island community where everyone knows everyone else, is often passionately accused of pushing a particular political agenda. The unfounded accusation, if often and loudly repeated, will gradually build itself up into an accepted truth, which, in the context of partisan politics in our public service, always leads to a witch-hunt of opposition party sympathisers.
It speaks volumes on the merits, qualifications and talents of the highly–placed public service decision makers when the structures created to efficiently deliver public service are regularly dismantled. The dismantlement however, never takes away any significant part of the public service or the rules and procedures or the officers required to ensure compliance. It merely unloads the odd section that is perceived to have become cumbersome or the public service officer who has become persona non grata!
This therefore, is what I understand the 2007 public service restructuring exercise to be!

Is it truly contributing to a public service sliming exercise when Government decides to re-organise its ministerial departments resulting in 56 redundancies? How far far-reaching will this be in terms of less duplication and improved efficiency?

If a true answer can only be reached from a careful analysis of Government public service organisational structures before and after the current exercise, the justifications given thus far fail to convince!

But could we be barking up the wrong tree? The truth of the matter may very well be elsewhere!

The truth may lie in that we have an employment base made fat and heavy from years of well-intended but unwise and short-term social and employment policies ranging from nationalisation to full-employment and other schemes and restructurations during the time when employment in public service was needed both to pacify those on the lower socio-economic spectrum and reward others who had demonstrated militant zeal and dedication to a particular political cause. Bottom line is that now, when considered purely in economic terms, we can ill-afford this bloated public service that costs more that it benefits the country.

It smacks of a certain clichéd political partisanship for Government to shrug off as ‘hypocritical melodramatisation’ the criticisms of its August 2007 public service restructuration. The exercise has certainly caused discontent in those made redundant and a sympathetic ripple among their immediate circles and at least some concern in others.

Any self-respecting political opposition would pounce on the atmosphere of local discontent and concern to seek political capital at the expense of the ruling party.

Wisdom suggests however, that when Church Leaders are moved to the point of making public statements on the matter, then the issue is not solely one of partisan politics!

No self –respecting public service can make any pretence at efficiency if it cannot ensure job security. No public service officer can perform to best ability in an atmosphere of uncertainty and stress over the secure tenure and career development of the office.

Unfortunately, from the experience the country has had of similar past ‘restructuring’, it can be surmised that it’s the usual sword of Damocles which comes in the wake of national elections and which falls mostly over those heads of the public service which had not showed the expected level of dedication and zeal in their support of the ruling party’s cause, or worse, had been misled into believing that democracy had truly arrived, with its accompanying rights and freedoms to which every man, woman and child can make just claims as free citizens!

The government of the ruling party has never failed to bring all to their senses.

Because in our beautiful islands, there is a democracy and rights and freedoms that are not defined in the same way they are in other democratically accountable countries.

The local national leaders speak pompously on democracy. The president even talked on meritocracy, which latter has probably caused Michael Young to shudder, and Karl Marx to sigh, in their respective graves!

On the one hand, one has only to look at some of the current highly placed faces in the local public service structure to wonder about their talents and merits! On the other, isn’t meritocracy anathema to the practices and philosophies the country has been exposed to these past 30 years?

Let’s face it! Rights and freedoms in our country derive directly from the largesse of the ruling party. Few of us seem to understand this reality. Most of us pay more attention to, and have misplaced hopes in, the public statements and other lip service dutifully given more to appease foreign observers than to seriously allow any policy or national effort to truly render the Seychellois free!

Others may have understood it clearly and wisely camouflaged their feelings and beliefs in the now well-established national tradition of ‘Vey son pye diri ‘.

To date, however, few public service structures have withstood the post-election vengeful brooms! Did not the 2^nd republic’s former president call out against the serpents.? Isn’t THAT part of what the people clamoured for. ‘Tir li, I pa ek nou’!

Sadly, this seems to be the call the President of all Seychellois is responding to! Public service efficiency is only a decent dress with which to clothe a base action.

Cabinet Reshuffle or Playing Musical Chairs In Seychelles

2007-07-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

It is the prerogative of the head of state to appoint and reshuffle the cabinet.

In exercising this priviledge, the head of state seeks to lay down the thrust of national policies and priorities as well as to chart the course that the state administration will follow.

Other than the inevitable and quasi universal portfolios of Health, Finance, Education, Employment, Sports and Culture, the cabinet portfolios in every country give a clear message of what the administration will do and the areas of priority thrusts for national development, based on the economic realities of the country and the potential it has and needs to harness and harvest to secure sustainable national economic and social development.

The thrust can be for developing basic economic mainstays which latter vary from country to country. Some have vast natural resources and other development potential (oil, timber, and valuable minerals, fisheries, agriculture, tourism.) Where viable natural resources are wanting, the thrust for national development often are laid on the services sector, such as human resources, trade and commerce.
The boss at State House declared he wanted to : set new policies, transform the way things are done in the country, focus on efficiency, reduce bureaucracy, have a government that relinquishes its role as an employer and takes on the role of facilitator. In short an annouced change for everybody’s betterment. Sustainable national economic development was not to be part of the game.

Indeed the new administration annouced on 3rd July (2007) seems to lack a discernible thrust of national priorities, and appears to be more of a musical chair play, shifting personalities around and regrouping of portfolios with a timely (if sometimes deserving) retirement and what can pass as an ill-disguised move to maintain the Party heriditary allegiances.

Not unsurprisingly, the focus of the new administration seems to be more on the usual services delivery. These are (not in order of priority):

Health, Education, Foreign Affairs, Human Resource Development, Revenue Collection, Environment, Transport, Housing, Community Development, Youth, Sports, Culture, Young Leaders, Investment, Land Use, Information, Communication, Technology, Planning Authority, Reclamation Work, Natural Ressources, Social Development.

There is no indication of adequate emphasis on our most viable national economic mainstays such as Fisheries and Tourism ( though there is a new portfolio for oil exploration.)

Fisheries is probably covered within the Natural Ressources Division along with Agriculture. Both remain at the same level of national emphasis as the more services-oriented Transport and Environment sectors. They apparently are not deserving of any particular emphasis. A Fishing Authority is to be run by an executive formerly (reportedly) from a revenue collection office.

Tourism is relegated from the attention of the Vice President to a board headed by a former Principal Secretary.

The new cabinet also has the usual mix of overlapping roles.

The office of the president has a high executive in charge of Young Leaders, while another high executive in a Ministry is responsible for youth affairs.

Civil Aviation is not to be confounded with the Transport Division. The latter is barracked to land transport and presumably to road construction and maintenance.

Land Use and Urban Planning remain two distinct areas of responsibility. The former is even quaintly regrouped with Investment and Industries.

Environment seems to be deserving of such national import that it has both ministerial and presidential attention.

Regrettably, while reclamation work seems to have been elevated to national importance, there is scant focus on internal security and policing. No indication either that the oft-declared quests for higher moral values, stronger families, intensified fight against social evils (illegal drugs use and trafficking, crime, domestic violence) greater national unity and harmony will receive any particular national attention.

What can one say? Good Luck to the new team. Do the best you can!

A little word of appreciation for Mrs Sylvette Pool though. She 's been in there since mid 1980s and has charted Information, Culture, Youth, Sports portfolios through good and bad times. Have a battery-recharging retirement Ma'am! You deserve it!