The ignorant person who once said that no one is indispensable has obviously not visited our little island or met our compatriots. We are blessed with a few people without whom this country would simply vanish into oblivion. And, God bless them, they are everywhere.

A few weeks ago, we brought to your attention – lest you were oblivious to competence and how it is restricted to a limited number of people – a rare phenomenon called Youshreen Choomka. This proud member of the ruling MSM party was so indispensable to the Independent Broadcasting Authority that when, as chairperson, she was trying to recruit someone to head this organisation, decided that she – herself – was the only one competent enough to take on that role. She, therefore, recruited herself! And after a sham of a recruitment exercise, she found herself director of the IBA.

This week, we discovered a few more indispensable persons. First, Gérard Sanspeur. Already senior advisor at the Ministry of Finance, Sanspeur is also the chairman of the Board of Investment and either director or managing director of half a dozen other entities. This week, he was also appointed by the government as chairman of the State Land Development Company Ltd, a position which Gaëtan Siew occupied until then, and which cost us about Rs800,000 just in his six-month globe-trotting! Conflict of interest? Nahhh! Sanspeur himself is adamant there isn’t any so end of the conversation.

In the same company, there is another equally indispensable person by the name of Claude Wong So, who was appointed CEO! He also happens to be the chairman of the Road Development Authority and of the Airport of Rodrigues Ltd.

To the list of indispensable people, you can add another person whose unique competence the country has just discovered: Kailash Trilochun. He is at the same time – hold your breath – chairman of the Financial Intelligence Unit, legal representative of the Information and Communication Technologies Authority, legal advisor of the Road Development Authority and of the Mauritius Shipping Corporation. Phew! And, he says in an interview in Weekend, that other parastatal organisations had also contacted him but he refused their offers. Naturally, he accepted to be on all these boards and in those advisory positions “out of patriotism”.

We don’t dare, of course, ask about the pay cheques all the indispensable people take home at the end of the month as a token of gratitude for their patriotism but we have an idea with the Rs3.3 million Trilochun received only from the ICTA for one single case!

Obviously, this manna from heaven has nothing to do with their political connections. It is their competence, stupid! Although Trilochun proudly brandishes the fact that he had campaigned for Lepep alliance, if he got these nominations, “It is due to my competence,” he announces – unanimously – a very objective opinion, you must concede!

While some loud-mouthed ministers are quick to reproachfully brand hard-working entrepreneurs – who put at risk their capital, their professional reputation and their careers – as 'fat cats', Lepep government is blatantly breeding real parasitic fat cats of crony capitalism in sinecure positions by the bucketful. Little wonder then that the prime minister, of his own admission in the national assembly last Tuesday, cannot conveniently remember what is in the manifesto on the back of which his government got elected!

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