The impudence is really breathtaking; if you are caught doing something which affronts the norms of decency and which any rational person would consider as a gross abuse of taxpayers' money, blame the rules that allow you to behave with such brazen effrontery. 'It's not my fault, officer, it's the rules that force me to behave like this'. The fact that you and your political chums are entirely responsible for giving birth to these monstrous rules is neither here nor there.

Paradise Island is well known for its hubs. We have the I.T. hub, irrespective of the fact that internet connection fees are criminally exorbitant in a country that aims to make its citizens computer literate, and the relevant Regulatory Authority shamelessly exhibiting its impotence against a telecoms monopoly that seems weirdly interested in awarding all sorts of contracts to the few sad specimens calling themselves nou bann. We have the Knowledge hub that condemns poor students to a third rate education system where the dice are loaded in favour of those who can afford private tuition fees in order to complete syllabuses that generously paid teachers somehow find too onerous and burdensome within the norms of a free education system. The Medical hub consists largely of individuals who, despite the lack of any science subjects at S.C. level, return after five years of 'study' in the old Eastern European bloc and are then let loose as fully qualified doctors on a population that has been brainwashed into believing that every minor ailment needs medical attention; and a booming private medical sector where a ten minute consultation costs the same as the criminally low monthly salary paid to women cleaning our children's schools, and where waiting lists simply vanish with the neat trick of the government paid consultant switching his white coat for the money laden one of the private clinics.

I will overlook the other hubs for the purpose of this paper, except one that is unofficial but thriving quietly in the background. This hub is reserved for people who tell us they are keen to servi nou pei and who will often display false outrage if any extravagance on their part with taxpayers' money is highlighted in the media. Either they really believe that gross, unconscionable prodigality with our money is designed to help the country, or they really take us for irredeemable idiots who will swallow any justification for their seemingly incurable addiction to dissipate our money.

The town twinning hub has grown vigorously over the last decade and it is impossible to escape the conclusion that it was devised for no other reason but to facilitate municipal jollies and the swelling of councillors' guts. We have all become tediously bored with various manz boir scandals that only seem to confirm the cynical view that people who strive so hard to obtain the all important electoral ticket are only putting themselves up for election for selfish motives, or for some spurious validation of their delusion that they are more intelligent than they look. The comedy of errors presided over last week by Fritz Thomas, the Lord Mayor of our capital city, is ample testimony of the poor quality of our representatives and of the triumph of a vivid imagination of effective leadership over the sad reality of incompetence laced with a tragic impersonation of someone who knows what he is doing.

During that meeting of the municipality of Port Louis last Wednesday, it was disclosed that the previous Lord Mayor, Reza Issack, had during the previous two years embarked on 11, yes eleven, missions to various parts of the world. The other councillors, poor souls, had to make do with 'only' six missions. Issack had during his incredibly arduous task as numero uno citizen of our capital city found it absolutely necessary to spend vast amounts of our money on visiting Reunion, Madagascar, Canada, France, Vietnam, China, and Egypt.

For once, a politician has asked the same question that must be on everyone's lips; Councillor Raouf Khodabaccus could not conceal his surprise at the news of our globe trotting Lord Mayor and asked: "À quoi ont servi tous ces déplacements? Qu'est-ce qu'ils ont rapporté à Port-Louis et aux citadins?  These questions will unfortunately remain unanswered, same as the questions we all ask whenever another grinning ministerial idiot breaks the speed limit on his way to the airport for yet another useless mission. How can a government that rightly exhorts its citizens to ser sintir in order to extricate the nation from the economic mess successive governments have lumbered it with then waste our money with such callous nonchalance?

Issack replied to his critics in a way that suggests he is ignorant of a basic principle of politics: When you are in a hole,
stop digging! His response comes straight from the specialist school for excuses known as pa moi sa, li sa, and would serve as the perfect lesson for any budding politician straining at the leash to servi nou pei. Here is his reply in full from last week's le Defi Plus :"La capitale de Maurice est jumelée à plusieurs villes dans le monde. Il est donc impératif que ces relations soient entretenues. À quoi bon signer des accords de coopération sinon? De plus, il y a des sessions de travail auxquelles nous sommes invités. Les voyages ne sont pas des prétextes pour 'vacarner, manger et boire'. D'ailleurs, le ministre des Administrations régionales approuve ou rejette – c'est souvent le cas – les demandes de voyages".

Several questions spring to mind from this real gem of an answer:

1/ If it is absolutely imperative that relationships with these twinned cities around the world need to be entretenues, how come the traffic is one way? Why do our Lord Mayors feel it is so important to visit these places when their mayors presumably have better things to do with their taxpayers' money than to go on a freebie to Paradise Island?

2/ It is patently more impératif for the Lord Mayor to at least try to resolve the perennial problems of traffic congestion, inadequate housing, drugs, prostitution, law and order, the wholesale takeover of our pavements by street sellers, and all the other problems that blight our capital city, instead of traveling in comfort every two months at our expense. The citizens of Port Louis can easily draw up a list of areas that demand urgent attention, and I bet you not one of them will put 'missions' anywhere on that list.

3/ If these voyages are not an excuse for vacarner, manger, et boire, what exactly are they for? As Khodabaccus so cogently puts it: Qu'est-ce qu'ils ont rapporté à Port-Louis et aux citadins?

4/ À quoi bon signer des accords de coopération sinon? Well, why don't you tell us, as we are at a loss to understand how someone can waste so much of our money and then resort to non sequitur as the apparently intelligent substitute for accountability?

5/ The last sentence in his statement suggests that it is all the fault of our local class warrior, James Burty David. If only he had rejected the demands for these ridiculous missions! Perhaps David ought now to retrieve his bolt cutter after that rather stupid act of pointless bravado at Le Morne last year and use it to demolish all further requests for these ludicrous town twinning missions.

Issack's pathetic justification of these wasteful missions is self serving and follows the same pattern of blaming someone else that our politicians use every time their shameless prodigality is highlighted. It is apparently never their fault and they simply do not realise that the same old excuses never lose their absurdity irrespective of the number of times they are used. It is reminiscent of how everyone charged with corruption always states that he is serein...
The excuse that you are only doing what the rules allow you to do is lame and unworthy of anyone who shouts his patriotic credentials at every opportunity. The rules are made by the political class to cover a multitude of sins funded by the taxpayer. No political appointee ever complains about the rules that allow him to obtain a vast amount of money from a contract of employment that also gives him almost everything that he would want for free, including a three month salary bonus irrespective of his level of performance. Blaming the rules is rather like the boxer complaining loudly that the other chap is punching him too hard...

The spurious logic that the rules allow politicians to get away with any display of behaviour that is incongruous with their pious declarations to servi nou pei is insulting and exemplifies the contempt and cynicism that the political class really feels for the population. An Audit Report that, year on year, knocks us senseless with accounts of the same immoral, uncontrolled, and grossly immoderate waste of public money by so called public servants and which is then conveniently left to gather dust is a criminal indictment of the general laissez faire attitude of those we vote into office.
The rules can never be blamed for the unleashing of gargantuan egos on the public purse; a lack of humility, modesty, self effacement, and self restraint is unfortunately the hallmark of most of our politicians, and it has become impossible to hammer into their thick skulls this simple message: the people have made you who you are, and therefore good manners, if nothing else, demands that you at the very least show some gratitude.

Instead, ingratitude is the order of the day and appreciation and respect of the sacred covenant we make with them at every election is replaced with an unseemly race to further one's own interests and to become a first class tourist at our expense.

Email: servipei@yahoo.com