The MedPoint saga has taken a predictable farcical turn. And it is not funny. Or maybe we are just not all in on the joke.

Almost every evening – perhaps as a way to keep our weight in check – we are served a generous dose of the same dinner accompaniment by our national broadcaster: a detailed account of Pravind Jugnauth’s lawyers telling us about the ‘relevant documents’ the ICAC supposedly withheld from them.  And the MBC – which, by the way, falls under the ministry of the accused – kindly obliges by allowing  them to extrapolate on a case in court!

So we learn that some “relevant cabinet papers” which would have proven Jugnauth’s innocence were deliberately not given to him when he asked for them. Of course, the ICAC’s former board has no means to respond, let alone defend itself. It was dismantled and dismissed in an unprecedented show of force by the prime minister – and coincidentally the father of the accused– and a new political nominee, Lutchmeeparsad Aujayeb, was singularly appointed, a few days before the hearing of the case, to temporarily replace the whole board.

Without getting bogged down in the details of the relevance or lack thereof of the documents being talked about, let us not lose focus of what the MedPoint case is about. It is not about whether the previous government agreed to the project of buying a building to set up a geriatric hospital or not. It is not even about the speed with which the cheque was signed to avoid the owners of the MedPoint clinic having to pay to the government – to us, in other words – Capital Gains Tax – introduced by the same Pravind Jugnauth. The case is about conflict of interest and how the figure got mysteriously inflated from Rs75m to Rs145! It is about the then-minister of finance reallocating funds after the now-notorious “Dear Pravind” letter, without prior approval of the cabinet, to pay for a clinic in which he and his sister are shareholders. That is the crux of the case! Now, if there is a cabinet paper authorising the inflated figure and therefore the additional funds, we would like the MBC – which has now substituted itself for our courts of law – to show it to the citizens of this country so that they are convinced of the innocence of the client of these vociferous lawyers. For what it’s worth, though, the former secretary to the cabinet recently stated in court under oath that there was no cabinet decision to purchase MedPoint though there was a decision to acquire a geriatric hospital.

In the meantime, we are told – by and by – that the MedPoint clinic will be used as a cancer hospital. Has anyone seen the state of decrepitude of the building we paid Rs145 m for? As if having cancer wasn’t depressing enough, now cancer patients have to go and get treated in that hole!

Quite frankly, the way the government handles this issue will reflect on all of its elected members, some of whom we had placed high hopes in. Do they all stand for this?