Those of you who were fed up to the back teeth with the Best Loser System (BLS) and having to declare one’s ethnic background before standing for election, I am afraid there is little to warm your spirits. After the razzmatazz around the mini-amendment and how we have all been freed from the shackles of the past which divided us and how we can all stand together under the umbrella of unity, we are still playing catch-up, and playing it badly.

Here is the narrative of Nomination Day: the small parties naturally did not declare their community and – without wanting to be cynical – that was like the sound of one hand clapping. Lalit candidates, faithful to their party’s tradition of poking fun at the whole system, picked the community they ‘belong’ to in a draw. The parties which tabled and voted for the mini-amendment, on the other hand, were all happy to declare that they were Hindus, Muslims, Chinese or General Population. Except for seven candidates! Some light at the end of the tunnel, you might say. Until you find out that, according to the way the system works, none of these ‘principled’ people had a cat’s chance in hell of benefiting from the BLS, which is based on an ethnic balance between the majority and the minorities. So what the heck! Those who had the faintest chance were careful not to take a risk.

But this meaningless symbolism, which does not cost anyone anything, was marketed as big news and standing for principle so much so that the leader of the MSM, Pravind Jugnauth, even went back to the electoral commission to ‘delete’ the word ‘Hindu’ from the nomination paper as – apparently – this had been placed there by someone else. I know cynicism is a luxury that we cannot afford here but didn’t anyone advise him not to bother?

The one who takes the cake in this whole episode, however, is Michael Sik Yuen. This is the gentleman who – at the last general election – stated, with pomp and fanfare that he refused to declare that he was Chinese because he was simply Mauritian. Somehow, he managed to equate ‘Mauritian’ with the much narrower category of ‘General Population’ and even succeeded in selling that stunt to the press as ‘standing for a principle’. So he managed to make it to parliament under the PMSD banner as a best loser representing a community he clearly did not belong to, secured a ministerial seat as a member of the community he belonged to when it suddenly suited him and changed political parties when he smelled a whiff of danger in his own party – all in one term!

So, after we sat and listened to him for months trying to pass himself off as a hero who had a different ‘lifestyle’ to that of his community, today, he came to the wonderful realisation that his original ‘lifestyle’ was actually not bad after all! We must specify that all these realisations came to him so swiftly that he still has no idea how to explain them.   I tell you, when that apple hits your head!

When the politics of hypocrisy meets the economics of opportunism; when some of our representatives stoop so low and don’t think it’s low enough, I invite you to join me in a prayer: Please God, make us just that little bit more stupid! We could swallow all these inanities and even praise their authors for their magnanimity. Please God.