After the last few days, the government would be well advised to concentrate all its efforts on one area: eradicating the drug that Minister Sinatambou is on. It’s devastating for him, for the government and for the country.

Just how many blunders will he make before coming to terms with the fact that silence is at times golden. We had kindly warned him to lie low until at least city Barkly has forgotten about his insensitive and callous comments to the effect that he had no idea that children whose houses were being violently demolished with bulldozers before their very eyes would be traumatized! It would seem that he has forgotten the welcome he had been given by people whose strength of character and intelligence he must have underestimated. Has he already forgotten the way he darted out of the scene with one leg in a moving car and the other dragging along?

Yesterday, again addressing the most vulnerable section of our society, from his ivory tower, he made a statement that would make Marie Antoinette blush with embarrassment: If you have nothing to eat, eat biscuits and drink water! For two days of rain, cold and humidity, old men and women, children, the sick, the traumatized are advised to make do with biscuits and water! Worse, reacting to the only two mattresses provided, he added, “You don’t expect me to and order mattresses for you from Kalachand’s, do you?” No, perish the thought! They can all share two mattresses, thank you for your generosity!

 If the vulnerable people – who have left their homes not knowing what they are likely to find when they get back – are told point blank that they have to eat biscuits and drink water, Sinatambou and his colleagues in parliament are, on the other hand, much more privileged. Their food used to cost us Rs400,000 a day! Then you will remember that all the MPs had signed a petition saying that the food supplied by Beachcomber – a five-star hotel – was not good enough for them. For that cause célèbre, they closed ranks and managed to have their favourite caterer, La Clef des Champs, come back to cook four meals a day for them and, at times, pack some takeaways for their dear ones! We had no choice but to pay another Rs100,000, bringing the bill that comes out of our threadbare pockets to Rs500,000 a day. A day! How much of that comes out of their bulging pockets? Rs300 (three hundred) a month! That is their entire contribution to the luxury meals provided for them. No other parliamentarians in the world have it that good! Not in Westminster. Not in the Lok Saba. Not anywhere.

While our MPs were stuffing themselves full at our expense, none of them thought of proposing a small budget for tea/coffee and some simple food for those who brought them to power.

Then the prime minister, who was hibernating in his mansion, not worried in the least about those surviving on biscuits for two days, suddenly reappeared for a photo opportunity and some hypocritical talk, all digested for the MBC to force-feed it to us in the evening.

Taking all of us for fools. No shame, no embarrassment, no nothing. But then again, what did you expect from a government that has Sinatambou as spokesperson?! Doesn’t he know what happened to Marie Antoinette? Told him to come off the drug!

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