Blog: Foul is Fair

In his political press conference held at State House the new leader of the opposition, Sir Anerood Jugnauth blasted the government and more especially Navin Ramgoolam for mismanaging the affairs of the country. He used the office of the president for launching his political campaign.

Many are applauding him. It is their right. Many are also querying what the motivation for that conversion from president to the leader of the opposition is. Many see in that move the determination to put an end to the investigation on his son, the failed leader of the MSM. That failure has been so patent to high heaven itself that dad now has come to the rescue. As Navin Ramgoolam has pointed out, during the seven years that Sir Anerood Jugnauth has served as president under his premiership from 2005 to 2012, the new leader of the opposition had nothing to say about the mismanagement of the country by Navin Ramgoolam. What happened then? Let us not wear blinkers. The arrest of the son of Sir Anerood Jugnauth has triggered that hostile attitude against Navin Ramgoolam.

Sir Anerood Jugnauth claims that he has resigned as the incumbent at Le Réduit to convert himself into the new leader of the opposition to save the country from those who are ruining it and who are making merry on the back of the people. These are mere generalities and no specifics were given. From what or from whom is the new leader of the opposition going to save the country? From those who pocketed 44 million rupees after Sir Anerood Jugnauth as prime minister signed an agreement with the Ministry of Education to lease part of the Sun Trust Building to the government he was leading. Was not that a glaring example of conflict of interest and a blatant merry making on the back of the people? When the lease was prematurely ended by the new Labour government an amount of 44 million rupees had to be paid to the Jugnauth clan.

Is the new leader of the opposition going to save the country from people like him who as prime minister indecently had his effigy and that of his wife on bank notes as a cult personality measure? There were so many outcries against this indecent measure that the notes had to be recalled and new ones issue. What was the cost of that waste of money that was done to satisfy the cult personality of the new leader of the opposition?

Is the new leader of the opposition going to save the country from people who have no respect for institutions? We are not here talking about the office of the president that he has devalued in the tradition of a banana republic. We are talking about using power or rather abusing power to scrap the defunct Economic Crime Office to put an end to an investigation on an alleged case of corruption. Are we going to witness a repetition of this with the scrapping of ICAC to put a stop to the investigation on Pravin Jugnauth and Maya Hanoomanjee?

The above are just a few examples of the way that the new leader of the opposition abused the office of prime minister when he was reigning supreme in that position. There are many more like the sacking of permanent secretaries who loyally served the country from independence to 1982; the brutal sacking of the late Jean Delaître from the MBC and may others whose sole sin was to be seen as close to the Labour Party; the brutal arrest of Sir Gaetan Duval on the mere word of a habitual criminal; the attempted destitution of Navin Ramgoolam as a member of the Assembly when Parliament was recalled to sit an early morning, causing the Supreme Court to qualify that illegal move as a colourable device to eject Navin Ramgoolam from Parliament.

The blunt fact is that the new leader of the opposition after saying that it is better to lose power rather than work with Paul Berenger immediately contracted an alliance with the latter following the arrest of his son and his resignation from government. The new leader of the opposition will sell his soul even to the devil to win political power to achieve his own ends. All that we are going to hear from now on will be a series of attacks and a pouring of insults on Navin Ramgoolam as well as all kinds of attempts by the new MMM/MSM alliance to debauch some ministers or backbenchers from the government to force new elections. This simply stinks and it is clear that that new alliance has made the philosophy of Shakespeare' witches in Macbeth their own, FOUL IS FAIR. We know how matters turned out tragically for Macbeth for espousing that philosophy.

What the country needs is to be saved from the Jugnauth clan. Nothing more and nothing less!