Something quite amazing happened this week. After threatening to assassinate the leader of the opposition, Xavier-Luc Duval, and subsequently hotfooting it out of the country, Vice Prime Minister Showkutally Soodhun is back and went straight to the police. But then by some miracle (as far as local miracles go, anyway) he walked right out. No arrest (Soodhun’s lawyer pointed that out), no bail, no provisional charges. Nothing. In fact, on his way out, Soodhun saw fit to accuse Duval of ‘overreacting’ – as recipients of death threats have a tendency to do.

Soodhun’s political masters don’t seem that surprised by the ease with which Soodhun has sashayed back into the country. After all, the prime minister had already announced that he saw no reason to fire him and stated that “everybody knows” that Soodhun cannot possibly shoot Duval. No one in the prime minister’s entourage seems to have pointed out that a death threat is a death threat regardless of whether a death actually follows or whether the person making it actually is capable of carrying it out. And the prime minister should know, his party has been politically milking death threats since the 1980s, the most recent being the much-publicised ‘death threats’ against the prime minister and the minister mentor. Despite the fact that most of the people fingered by the drugs commission happen to belong to their own party. His spokesman, Etienne Sinatambou, a sharp lawyer apparently, could not make out the distinction either and flatly stated that there was “no case” against Soodhun, although both the prime minister and his spokesman insist that we should let the law take its course. They are just here to tell us that they know where it will finally end up. Somebody should have told those poor boys (and girls) at the CCID who spent three hours with Soodhun on Monday. What’s a little threat of assassination between political opponents, eh?

“Nobin knows that there are actually two forms of law in Mauritius.”

Everybody is quite calm about all this because the police commissioner, Mario “two track” Nobin, is on the case. He already set the tempo when he declared that he needed proof before arresting Soodhun. All the police and National Intelligence Unit officers at the meeting did not hear Soodhun threaten to kill the leader of the opposition. Not one. There is a video, so what? Contrary to his public – and increasingly unbelievable – rhetoric, Nobin knows that there are actually two forms of law in Mauritius. There is a big, even mighty law that has a lychee thief arrested, booked and sentenced in little over a day. An arbitrary arrest – for 10 days – in 2016 of Ish Sookun for allegedly sending threatening emails to the prime minister. Or, in 2015, when a Facebook user was arrested for stoking racial and communal hatred. In fact, the police can, and has, and does, arrest people on provisional charges and can hold them for up to 21 days. But that’s for political opponents, the less well-connected and the poor in general. Then there is a little, baby law, for government ministers and officialdom. Here, they need an exotic thing called proof. They need kid gloves when dealing with power. That’s why Soodhun can simply walk. He knows which of Nobin’s two tracks he is on.

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