The expression ‘the s**t hits the fan’, I am told, is used to describe the point at which “an already unstable situation devolves into utter chaos, often in spite of – or even due to – a higher authority's attempt to control it”. We have reached that point this week. In some cases, literally!

Many of our compatriots had their dinner interrupted yesterday by the sudden sight of the breakfast that their neighbours had the day before. They sat and helplessly watched as raw sewage spilled onto their streets and wells of used water from the sewerage flooded their houses, emitting the most putrid smells one can think of. And they were not the only ones. Citizens in Rose Hill are now so used to having other people’s wastewater seep into their yards that they could soon become experts in the analysis of our eating habits. As for businesses, they are silently weeping as customers understandably avoid the area like the plague.

Instead of apologising and atoning for the consequences of their amateurism and the hasty, badly planned tramway they rushed into, the government chose to demonise their predecessors and try to protect the firm they chose for the project, while dangling all sorts of unrealistic promises in the air. 

There was also a sufficient amount of the brown stuff in the insalubrious hospitals – as highlighted in the National Assembly on Tuesday. Patients have to put up with unhygienic conditions and the absence of the most basic necessities such as toilet paper! This was conceded by the minister of health himself! The man who must by now have put in a safe place the Rs15 million present given to him by the government for a plot of land that many reckon is not even worth half. 

The National Assembly saw its share of disaster as the speaker had to put an end to the weekly parliamentary session due to… rain! That’s all it took for a roof that no one had thought of maintaining to start leaking for our weekly democratic exercise to come to an end!

Now as this was going on, our propaganda machine – to which the gagging ICT new rules do not apply – has hit a new low. While we have always known that the MBC’s prime aim is noxious propaganda; while we did not expect much objectivity from an acting director general of the MBC who publicly stated, “I’m not MSM; I’m Pravind Jugnauth”, in the last four years, our national broadcaster has surpassed itself. So the TV anchor on Tuesday, while reporting the works at the National Assembly, suddenly dived into a humouristic video that Labour MP Shakeel Mohamed had posted on his Facebook page to show the lack of maintenance of the National Assembly building and therefore the lack of foresight of the government. Seizing the opportunity, the anchor shamelessly stated that the renovation works had been entrusted to Ireko – one of the British American Investment subsidiaries – under the previous regime! I don’t know which is worse: the fact that the information is absolutely wrong and toxic – Ireko actually renovated a totally different building, Government House, and NOT the National Assembly building – or the fact that the MBC no longer sticks to reporting biased news. It now adds its own totally biased opinion! Unheard of even by the standards of the MBC. 

It really looks as if even the thin filters the MBC had are completely gone. Now it is a company run directly from the kitchen by cooks that have never heard of subtlety. 

The s**t has indeed hit the fan. And the fan is spinning uncontrollably fast!

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