What a clumsy and insulting way to try and wriggle your way out of this tragedy! How dare you! Have you no shame? Not one iota?

First, you got into power through a ruse – a joke only you and your father found funny. You added insult to injury by telling us about the Westminster system. As if the mediocracy we are living in has anything to do with Westminster. Then, you used all the tricks in the book to get back into power: an outrageous abuse of the MBC never seen in this country before, a filthy racist campaign pitting one community against another, relayed by the MBC in a clear violation of the MBC Act, the promise of a pension the country clearly cannot afford and which – lo and behold you reneged on as soon as you were elected – and an election marred by controversy, vote suppression and rigging allegations.

Instead of being grateful that the sheeple that we are took it all lying down, you rubbed it in by engaging in several forms of blatant corruption coupled with enacting an unprecedented number of repressive laws giving your little self the power of life and death over us. You didn’t like a foreign pilot who said you were “mad” – an understatement in my opinion – so, you enacted a law that was raced through parliament and you threw him out of the country in the blink of an eye even though he was getting married to a Mauritian citizen. That law has served no other purpose since, but the sons and daughters of this nation now have to ask for your permission before they marry a foreigner and you can either accept or disapprove without giving any justification or allowing them to challenge your decision in court.

In the meantime, the nepotism festival was going on full-blast: every single institution in this country has been filled with a crony – most of the time an incompetent one. The most shocking one is the nomination of Sandya Boygah to the head of the Mauritius Standard Bureau – a position for which she has no competence or experience. In the process, you sacked a whole board, changed the law and pushed the acting director to the door. And it is that incompetence – at all the levels of governance – that we are all paying for today!

You also locked us up “to prevent the spread of Covid-19” and while we were terrified and hiding like rats, you enacted more repressive laws, giving you – not parliament – even more powers. To seem like a statesman, you hotfooted your way to the BBC to brag about how well you handled the pandemic. You forgot to mention that this was done at the expense of our livelihoods and leaving our own citizens stranded across the globe – a choice not many other countries seem to have made. And naturally, you also failed to mention that we had lost 10 lives and that you had kept our borders open waiting for your dear wife to come back to the country.

“I have lived in a dictatorship, Prime Minister. I still do, as it happens. And I prefer the first one. At least there, the two neurons I have were not being insulted every day with the Goebbels talk that we are living in a democracy.” 

While we were locked up, you and your cronies also had a feast. Contracts for medical supplies – some worth several millions– were shared between your friends in the jewellery, hardware and hotel business. When your government was caught with its hand in the cookie jar, you responded in your usual way: “I was not aware”. You never are when you are caught, are you?  But if you didn’t know about things you should have known about, what did you do once they were brought to your knowledge? You defended the situation tooth and nail and sent your lapdogs to arrest innocent citizens, barred journalists from your press conferences and slapped the term ‘anti-patriotic’ on anyone who dared highlight the result of your involvement in corrupt practices?

To help keep you glued to your seat, the central bank was raided and loans we can’t afford were signed with foreign countries.

Then, your incompetence surfaced in a major way in the Wakashio episode – an episode which is shrouded in complete opacity: was it just incompetence or something more sinister? We will never know because you blatantly refused the call to set up a commission of inquiry and opted for a court of investigation instead, that will never investigate your portion of responsibility and that of your incompetent ministers in this tragedy.

You probably didn’t expect the sheeple to wake up and shed the fear you instilled in us during your reign of terror. But we did. More than 150,000 people – according to your own brother-in-law’s estimate – took their anger, frustration, helplessness, outrage, disgust and agony to the streets, asking for your resignation. A call that reverberated in the whole world. Oh, you made history, Prime Minister! There is no ambiguity about the message: “BLD” (Kick him the hell out)! But you refused to hear it and things got worse: we woke up to dead bodies – dolphins and humans and irreversible human tragedies. A devastating sight, which your insensitive nominees made worse by talking about compensation money to grief-stricken families!

Had you had a smidgen of shame, you would have quietly bowed out of public life altogether. Instead, you again used the MBC that found the price of eggs on the market a more important headline than the historic protest and you shamefacedly read carefully prepared notes to tell us that we live in a democracy. While using the National Assembly as your own kitchen, which you close and open as you wish! How dare you!

I have lived in a dictatorship, Prime Minister. I still do, as it happens. And I prefer the first one. At least there, the two neurons I have were not being insulted every day with the Goebbels talk that we are living in a democracy.