Khoda Pahar, nikla chuha (we dug a mountain and found only a mouse). This Urdu expression seems quite an apt summary of the government’s strategy after the publication of Lam Shang Leen’s commission report. But even this rather disappointing document demands a strategy on the part of the government.

Until the publication of the report, the government seemed to have no strategy on how to contain the fallout of their own party becoming increasingly implicated in the proceedings of the commission. The government seemed to be purely in survival mode, sending out contradictory signals all over the place. Just to take one example: Raouf Gulbul was forced to step down as head of the Law Reform Commission and the Gambling Regulatory Authority when his name came up in the commission. But Roubina Jadoo-Jaunbocus, who was also named in the commission, was elevated to gender minister in the cabinet reshuffle, following Soodhun’s exit as housing minister. Similarly, the deputy speaker of the National Assembly, Sanjeev Teeluckdharry, was allowed to stay on despite being named in the commission as well.

After the publication of the Lam Shang Leen report, - it many shortcomings notwithstanding -the government’s strategy is becoming clearer. And it’s simply to do what the MSM under Anerood Jugnauth did after the publication of the Rault commission report on drugs in the 1980s.

In the 1980s, the Rault report was swiftly followed by the exit of Serge Thomas and Lutchmeeparsad Ramsahok – marginal, dispensable figures with no independent weight of their own neither in the MSM nor in the government. They were made to vacate their parliamentary seats. Faced with a spate of by-elections (Harish Boodhoo too had resigned), the then-government chose to call for elections in 1987 instead. An election that it won with the rhetoric that it did not hesitate to strike down bad apples in its midst.

The current MSM wants to do something similar, but with certain limitations. On the one hand, the report has done the government an inadvertent favour by limiting itself to marginal figures and chancers within the MSM. But with the by-elections in Quatre Bornes in 2017 still fresh in their minds, the government has demoted Jaunbocus and Teeluckdharry, but is not willing to go much further by actually calling for them to vacate their parliamentary seats as well, as the MSM did in a less shameless age in the 1980s. Indeed, the government is actually dangling the possibility of political rehabilitation, if cleared, just to make sure they don’t stray too far away from the party. Plus, it’s the same proviso that Pravind Jugnauth gave himself when he stepped down as ICT minister following an unfavourable verdict from the Intermediate Court in the MedPoint case.

And so, everybody wins. The drugs commission can claim a good pay packet for apparently delivering results. The government gets to pose as merciless against those within its own ranks that step out of line. Jaunbocus and Teeluckdharry are left to thrash around, but still within the protective shell of parliament.  And the public is left to feast on tilapia while, yet again, watching the tuna swim away.

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