It is with great sadness that I have read your article « The scandal surrounding the government - Paid partisan advertisements to newspapers », le Défi Blog 26^th July 2008 and le Mauricien 24^th July 2008. I can feel that you are speaking from the heart as it bleeds through the loss of your SUNDAY VANI creation, a weekly newspaper which truly revolutionised news reporting and gave people a freedom to show much of the truth long suppressed. Sunday Vani became an immediate target of the pro-European press especially as it was aimed mainly at Hindus and contained certain items written in Hindi. I was amongst the first people to contribute in the columns of your paper. I still remember Mr Ramalingum with whom I was in regular contact. I had expected that at least every Hindu household would have had a copy of Sunday Vani in its lounge with pride. There was no reason why your paper could not have survived. What really went wrong Harish bhai? The younger generation would have been brought up with it, and in time they would have been speaking Hindi in their homes, with their relatives and friends. But now, they say they speak 'creole' which they cannot even define and do not even know how they came to speak the language. Even your Sunday Vani started to publish pieces in slave language.

'Independent' press

Originally, newspapers tended to be government financed and owned and were referred to as State-controlled press. Newspapers which are privately-financed and owned are referred to as the 'independent' press. What this really means is that they are financed independently of the government. As the so-called independent press kept on boycotting people's views, perhaps many of your views too, the Sunday Vani came as a breath of fresh air. It also scared many of the pro-European privately financed papers which pictured the Sunday Vani as a sectarian and Hindu paper, and many Hindus went along with their propaganda.

Rapprochement with Bérenger

The turning point came when you decided to turn politician again. According to some reports, you met or contacted Paul Bérenger, or vice versa, and decided to promote his politics against Navin Ramgoolam. You even started to boycott my articles since I had been critical of Bérenger because I exposed his politics of division. In the 1960's he hijacked Le Club des Étudiants Militants, where he was a guest, because of his superiority complex and felt he could not serve under those he regarded as inferior for obvious reasons. He was not fighting for independence like Robert Mugabe or Fidel Castro, but was provoking a Marxist-Maoist revolution in Mauritius. He uses people like nobody's business.

What did you expect Navin Ramgoolam to do, Harish bhai? Give you a medal? A privately financed newspaper does not and should not depend on government advertisements to survive and there is no law which can force the government to finance the survival of such a paper. The government can only inform the public through press releases as required by the law. If you want « the Supreme Court to give its interpretation of the financial rules and regulations governing [..] advertisements » effected by the government and « Government-controlled parastatal bodies », you should advise the 'affected' newspapers to bring a test case, or bring one yourself, in the interests of those papers. Please do not forget to include the private sector advertisements as well.

Taxpayers' money

Taxpayers' money must be used in the public interest and not in the interests of privately financed papers. The notion that money paid by taxpayers belongs to the taxpayers is a totally misguided political claim. Tax is that amount of money which has to be paid. Civil Servants, including Ministers and Judges pay taxes too. But the taxpayer has no claim upon this money simply because IT DOES NOT BELONG TO THE TAXPAYER! It belongs to the State, and those who run the State have an obligation to use this money in the public interest. Those who say that taxpayers' money is « our money » are clearly misguided.

Readership

An independently financed paper must primarily depend on readership. Your targeted readers let you down, Harish bhai. Unless prescribed under the law, there is no obligation to force the government to advertise in your paper, however unfair they may be in selecting which papers they wish to place their advertisements with. You are wrong in believing that this « concerns public funds being utilized by politicians for political purpose ». According to what you are saying, if the government advertises in le Mauricien, it is fine, but when the same advertisement is placed in Mauritius Times, it is for a 'political purpose'. Do you honestly believe that a court of law will entertain this sort of reasoning?

Those papers which you fear may suffer the same fate as Sunday Vani for want of advertisements from the government because you care so much about them must be laughing at you, which is nothing new. In fact, they obtain more than their share of advertisement from the private sector due to their wide readership. What did the private sector do for Sunday Vani? In the UK, News of the World, The Sun are regarded as forming part of the gutter press, but the private sector spends silly millions in advertising in those papers, again because of their wide readership.

Sunday Vani was a quality paper which your targeted readers could not appreciate because they are ashamed of who they really are. They did not want a paper containing items in Hindi, such as Vedic Sanatan Prayers, in their lounge because « Qui dimoune pou dire? ». Similarly, if The Star and Impact News are not in the good books of the government, as you allege, it is up to the targeted readers to buy those papers to keep them alive. Given the quality of those two weeklies, I do not see how your allegation is justified. Since when did you become the lover boy of le Mauricien, Harish bhai, given the sheer number of your pieces it is publishing lately? Is it as long as you embarrass Navin Ramgoolam and the Labour Party, until they ally with Bérenger, that is ?

Conclusion

Democracy is about the exercise of power by the people [ref. Anarchism] or through their representatives under a system of majority rule through one person one vote [ref. Fascism]. Democracy did not invent Press Freedom, Human Rights and the Rule of Law. Proponents of democracy have hijacked those principles. It is therefore improper to invoke democracy which, in practice, is a source of corruption in itself, to make a case for regulating how the government (or the private sector) should allocate its advertising budget with respect to privately financed newspapers. The government is only bound to respect its prescribed obligations.

It appears that you are playing pro-Bérenger politics once more, and this is what choked Sunday Vani to death.

M Rafic Soormally

London

NB. The above is a reply to Harish bhai's article which, due to its length, I have chosen to post separately.