Let there be light. It is almost unimaginable that all press coverage of Pravind Jugnauth’s verdict did not start like that. Those four words, from the third verse of the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, maintained its biblical connotation over the years and should have been used to announce the Second Coming of our very own messiah from the clutches of the law.

As if Mauritians needed any more reason to indulge religion in its allegedly secular constitution, Jugnauth’s return has prophetic tendencies. In an eerily similar manner, the Nicene Creed adopted by the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325 predicted the return of the Messiah, albeit in a slightly more dramatic fashion. The creed claimed that “seated at the right hand of the Father, he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.” In many ways, compar­ing Pravind Jugnauth to the central figure of Christianity is a gross exag­geration but given the pedestal that we put our political class on and the relevance of that quote, it can surely be used for illustrative purposes.

All biblical metaphors aside, there is a different feeling this time with Jugnauth’s comeback. After he spent the last year in the wilder­ness, the MSM leader has come back with a point to prove rather than simply maintain his position as an entitled son waiting for his turn. Well, in all honesty, he is still an entitled son waiting for his turn but there are some other issues he has to deal with first.

He has to reaffirm himself as the leader of the majority party in the coalition, with the likes of the PMSD gathering serious momentum over the last few months. Jugnauth also has to obliterate any dissident movements that have cropped up within his party during his absence. More importantly for him though, he has to get through the audition that he is currently undertaking to prove himself as a potential prime minister.

However, except for his prime ministerial audition, it is unlikely that he will be able to deal with anything else. In spite of the cloud that was hanging over him since his initial guilty verdict was pronounced, Pravind Jugnauth was never really absent from the political scene. He was the leader of the MSM when Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo and Roshi Bhadain got embroiled in a war by proxy. He was the leader of the MSM when Raj Dayal had to resign as minister of environment in a corruption scandal. He was leader of the MSM when Showkutally Soodhun did whatever Showkutally Soodhun usually does. Pravind Jugnauth was there and he was their leader.

This is not the return of a messiah by any stretch of the imagination. Pravind Jugnauth is a terribly flawed man but in this passive-aggressive shambles of a government, it is a beautiful quality. If this is the Second Coming they had in mind, then it is mildly underwhelming.