There is a good piece of news this week and I think you should be part of it: Our vice-prime minister, Showkutally Soodhun, has an opinion. Better still, he expressed it in a way that the recipient managed to decode it. In these times of intellectual paucity in the political sphere, one should have started popping the champagne.

The only problem is that we are talking about a vice prime minister ‘sharing his opinion’ with the head of the police force – an institution where the highest degree of independence is necessary – about how the latter should go about conducting an enquiry in the Trilochun case! The irony lost on Soodhun is that by ‘sharing’ with the police commissioner ‘the opinion’ that the latter should not allow Trilochun’s lawyer to interfere in the case, he is directly doing the exact same thing: interfering in the same case. In real democracies, protesters would have thronged the streets at the mere thought that their independent institutions are taking their marching orders from the Executive. Not in Mauritius, my dear, as our vice prime minister even expressed his satisfaction that the police commissioner “dakor avec moi” (agrees with me).

But then again, this is nothing new. Not so long ago, the prime minister himself stated in parliament that he had instructed the police commissioner not to arrest former Environment Minister Raj Dayal, implicated in a serious case of alleged corruption, or former Finance Minister Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo, implicated in an allegedly favourable 1.1 million euro loan from the State Bank of Mauritius. In both cases, the police commissioner was happy to oblige.

I do not exactly hold Kailash Trilochun dear to my heart and I have expressed the opinion that depleting the nation’s coffers the way he did may not be illegal but it is certainly immoral. Besides, the accusations made against him in the criminal assault of the chairman of the ICTA, Bhanoodutt Beeharee, are extremely serious. However, in a democracy, heroes and villains should have the same human rights vis-à-vis the law. And politicians have no business poking their dirty noses in the way the police conduct enquiries, no matter who the accused are and what their political views and political connections might be.

Trilochun has to come and face the accusations levelled at him and he has no right to negotiate how the police do their job. The request made by his lawyer for him to have an hour after he has landed to have a shower before going to the police is ludicrous. If I had stashed away as much money as he did, I’d have my shower and my clothes laundered on the plane. Besides, the information – or surprise – his lawyer is threatening to make public in the case of Omega Ark and the DPP saga should not be used as leverage but be disclosed to the public as it is public money and public interests which are involved. Having said that, the police commissioner is big enough to know that his constitutional post gives him the authority to listen to neither the lawyer nor the vice prime minister.

Equally, we should be able to have answers to our questions. What information is Trilochun leveraging? Who is going to implicate who? Who is threatening who? Who has what to hide? Why is there such a conspiracy of silence in government?

By the looks of it, we will never know. This case is likely to end like the previous ones: allegations of corruption, of KGB methods, of Mafia tactics within the government by its own members but once cards are played behind closed doors, there are no losers. Except us!

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