For people of my generation, Steven Obeegadoo is a controversial and an unfortunate ubiquitous presence. Going through the Certificate of Primary of Education (CPE) in 2002, the first national exams without rankings under the Obeegadoo reform, there was hope our education system would finally find its way past the elitist system that excluded thousands of children. Like most things that the former minister of education touches, we found out really quickly that behind the charade of intellectual superiority, there is inherent failure and hypocrisy.

Almost two decades later, not a lot has changed for Obeegadoo. During a recent interview on a private radio station, he reminded us why the population seems to be done with the vulgar realities of politics. He brought up two crucial issues that defied any sense of logic. The first one we’ll look at is his perspective on freedom of the press. He expressed support for the prime minister’s decision to block a couple of media outlets from attending his press conferences. Unsurprisingly for Obeegadoo, his reasoning was full of hypocrisy.

The deputy prime minister argued that the banned media outlets disseminated erroneous information hence the punishment, claiming his supreme leader was ‘hurt’. Let’s work with the assumption that he was right, just for the sake of argument. That would mean government policy on media outlets “manipulating information” would be to ban them. However, it is very clear that it is what we get from the absolutely ridiculous MBC, who maintains a plagued monopoly on broadcasting. It is also what we get from a couple of private media out- lets that are openly used as propaganda machines for the government and in one specific case, being mostly funded by Mauritius Telecom. Obviously, they have maintained access to the government’s press conference. From here onwards, there are two potential scenarios explaining Obeegadoo’s perspective.

The first scenario would be that “manipulating information” is perfectly fine if it is dealing with opposition forces, whether it is political parties, individual citizens and in some cases journalists. That would be a rousing endorsement of fake news as long as it benefits the government, a perfect example of the Obeegadoo hypocrisy. The second scenario would see Obeegadoo really believing in what he is saying and not being aware of the MBC’s abuse or the propaganda by progovernment private media outlets. That would mean that the deputy prime minister is shamefully ignorant. Whether he is guided by hypocrisy or by ignorance, neither of these character traits should define a minister. Or maybe in this day and age, these might be necessary “qualities” to have to be a member of parliament.

The second issue that he brought up is that of squatters on the island, as he was keen to justify senseless government policy in recent weeks. Once again, he was stuck at the shallow end of the debate, simply explaining how successive governments have been building fewer houses in recent years and the pervasive problem of red tape since the days of the Central Housing Authority (CHA). There was a lot of blabber on the symptoms but very little, if any, discussion on the causes of this crisis. The reality is that historical inequalities in the island on land ownership go back to the times of slavery and its immediate aftermath when ex-slaves lost plots of land that they had worked hard to buy.

Possibility of abuse

The Truth and Justice Commission found that ex-slaves losing land might have been caused by “absence of capital to manage the land” but also “greed of neighbouring estates and encroachment during the period of sugar expansion”. While ex-slaves had to deal with this inequality in land ownership, former slave owners were receiving “hefty compensation” for losing their workforce, even when slaves were brought in illegally. These compensations across the British empire were so significant that the UK Treasury revealed a couple of years ago that “the amount of money borrowed for the Slavery Abolition Act was so large that it wasn’t paid off until 2015”. To this day, it is not hard to assess who has the least amount of land (including those who have none and end up squatting) and who owns the most amount of land on the island. But there was none of that thought process pro- vided in Obeegadoo’s intervention, which could have been the perfect opportunity to bring up the case for reparations.

There is also the ideological void on homelessness. Let’s assess the argument that many supporters of the government are making about squatters. They claim that many of these squatters are “frauds” or “simply lazy”. Even though that is a classic case of victim-blaming, we are going to pretend that this is a valid argument. Is it ok then for “frauds” or “lazy” individuals to be homeless? There is no doubt that at the other end of that spectrum is the possibility of abuse, however, that will also mean that no kids will be sleeping under tents. As a society, we would probably prefer to risk our money on the homeless at the risk of losing some of it to fraudsters, rather than spending it with exorbitant wages for members of parliament or even the sickening “entertainment allowance” they get when they travel. Did we get any of that from Obeegadoo during his propaganda tour? Of course not!

It is easy to go after the fools in this government, of which there are many. However, we should also not be scared to call out those hiding behind the veil of alleged intellectual superiority. Don’t get fooled by Obeegadoo’s smooth talking. He is as bad as anyone polluting our parliament right now.