I am trying to keep a straight face while writing this. I hope you manage to do the same while reading it. I won’t have people around you questioning your sanity. Here it comes: “We will become a sports hub!” Keep your composure please! This is serious information coming from the minister of sports, Stephan Toussaint. 

God bless his soul! Such a tiny island in the middle of nowhere but so many hubs that we have become the centre of the world! Who says electing magicians to run this country doesn’t pay? With the waving of a wand, abracadabra, and sportsmen and women are deserting all the big capitals and coming to compete in our island! While the international sports are taking place, and since we are already a shopping hub cum duty-free island, visitors can go on a shopping spree so that they don’t miss the end of line branded items that were selling in their countries five years earlier at one fifth of the price. 

And since we are also a seafood hub, our visitors will have a field day choosing between the rubber slippers from China pompously called ‘fish fillets’ and the colourless frozen pellets from Madagascar curiously named ‘giant prawns’ by someone who most certainly has never seen a giant or a prawn! Our success in hubs – education, medical, bunkering and everything hub – is such that we came up with the great idea of an air corridor – “a hub to foster new routes which will enable the movement of people, goods and capital between Asia, Africa and beyond”! People would come all the way from Asia to access Africa. Last time I went to Addis from this great hub, it took me only 15 hours with two transits for a 3,000 kilometre-journey! Considering that the average speed of a passenger plane is 1,000 kilometre per hour, this air-corridor is really a lifesaver! 

But the sports hub is a stroke of genius, particularly that it won’t cost us anything. To the question as to whether the Rs3.9 billion (billion!) that the Côte-d’Or sports complex would cost would come from taxpayers, Toussaint immediately tells our colleague from l’express, “No. We had a grant and a loan at a reasonable interest from China.” 

Next time you meet the minister, you might want to look at the length of his nose! I mean I really admire the way many members of this government, including and perhaps particularly the prime minister, look you straight in the eye and give you a blatant lie without blinking. We have all passed our Primary School Certificate, haven’t we? So we know how to add and subtract and we can make the difference between a gift and a loan. So if China is ‘giving’ us (how magnanimous and altruistic!) a Rs1.1 billion grant and lending us Rs700 million, we have to pay back Rs700 million with interest and pay the Rs2.1 billion balance! That makes at least Rs2.8 billion, with a Rs700 million cost overrun and counting! For a complex that, according to the minister himself, might not be ready for the Indian Ocean Island Games and “it won’t be the end of the world. We did without it 2003”! Think of how much money our children and grandchildren will have to pay back? Think of our national debt! And think of the ease with which a government and a prime minister we did not elect are squandering such huge amounts of money – our money – for something they admit we don’t need! 

When the air corridor hit the wall, we left our shirt in the process. They then jumped into an inane project called Heritage City, and even showed us ‘expert figures’ to demonstrate that it was going to be paid for by foreign governments and we were going to sit and reap the benefits. When they headed full speed into the precipice, we left our trousers in it. The Metro Express, a project that is neither thought out nor properly planned will most likely cost us our shoes. The vengeful destruction of the BAI and Betamax will one day cost us our underwear. All this while being promised every time that we won’t have to pay a penny. 

The only thing we are left with are our orange socks, which Toussaint is eying to add to his collection! The rhetoric is the same: None of the Jackpot projects will cost  the taxpayer a penny. Sheer magic, I tell you! No other government in the world has yet found this recipe. We really should start exporting our ideas. Or our ministers!

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