Far too often, when we are dealing with scandals that monopolise public opinion, we tend to lose sight of the bigger picture. And crooked governments exploit that. A few examples spring to mind.

Perhaps the biggest scandal the MSM government had to face at the very beginning of its mandate was Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo’s resignation from his post of minister of finance, stating that he was ‘ashamed’ of the performance of his government. While this was going on and every journalist was busy analysing the implications of such a resignation on the general election, the government was working on a very dangerous bill: the Immigration Amendment Bill that gave full, unrestricted – and arguably unconstitutional – powers to the prime minister. The bill also takes away from the victim of this law any recourse to court. It took one day of debates and the bill turned into one of the most repressive laws in our recent history that basically allows the prime minister to expel a foreigner living in Mauritius and possibly married to a Mauritian citizen out of the country without giving any reason whatsoever.

Before the interest in Lutchmeenaraidoo’s resignation subsided, Patrick Hofman, a former Air Mauritius pilot who had angered the prime minister by calling him ‘fou’, had already been declared persona non grata and sent back to his country, with his Mauritian wife in tow. That’s it! No explanation, no reason, no possibility to challenge the decision in court!

In July 2022, while the prime minister was reeling under another scandal of gargantuan proportions that came to be known as the ‘sniffing gate’, another even more dangerous law sneaked into our statute book: the Immigration Act 2022. Few headlines, little interest and not even a slight embarrassment for the government. Everyone was waiting in front of their screen for the next ‘sniffing’ episode. Yet, this law went even further than the Immigration Act and gave full powers to the prime minister to take away the citizenship of any naturalised citizen without giving any explanation. In these very pages, former Chief Justice Eddy Balancy stated that this law might perhaps be “repugnant to the principle of separation of powers embodied in our constitution”!

Not everyone was sleeping, though, or waiting for their next fix of sniffing: Lalit’s Lindsey Collen hotfooted it to court and is right now bravely challenging this law, supported by Senior Counsel Antoine Domingue, Constitutional Lawyer Milan Meetarbhan and former Supreme Court Judge Vinod Boolell, all instructed by Attorney Ayesha Jeewa. How the courts react to her petition will arguably decide the fate of a large number of families in this country.  

And this is not the end of our woes. As the report of Magistrate Vidya Mungroo-Jugurnath (another brave woman) on Kisten’s death has been making the headlines, perhaps threatening the future of at least one member of the ruling party and arguably a couple of ministers, another reprehensible bill is slowly but surely heading to become an act: the Law Practitioners (Disciplinary Proceedings) Bill. If it goes through, and there is no reason to rely on the fake defenders of democracy not to stand up and say ‘aye’, the attorney general will be empowered to initiate an inquiry against any lawyer if he suspects him or her of “gross misconduct”. Lawyers like Antoine Domingue are calling for an “independent board insulated from the sphere of political influence, that as a law practitioner, Maneesh Gobin himself should submit to”*. Gobin has already shown his colours by vilifying and threateneing some law officers, blurring the barriers with the Judiciary and ‘advising the police commissioner to initiate an inquiry’ into the leak of the magistrate’s report. I don’t know how many of us believe he will show one shred of independence when he “disciplines” his colleagues!

As more scandals make the headlines and more and more repressive laws are surreptitiously enacted, giving monarchical powers to the prime minister directly or through his colleagues, we will wake up one day in a country where democracy and human rights are but a distant memory. That is the biggest scandal!

*Le Défi, October 22.