The National Assembly in any country works according to a code of behaviour respected by its members. These members are elected on the basis of their noble character, the importance they attach to their honour and reputation, their sense of fairness towards their colleagues and their accountability towards the people they swore to serve. This is why they are called “honourable gentlemen”.

These honourable gentlemen would fiercely defend their reputation and when they no longer can, they tender their resignation to keep on living by the code of honour that makes them the gentlemen they are.

Now, when you go around picking up candidates who have never looked up the words ‘honour’, ‘code of behaviour’, ‘fairness’ or ‘accountability’ in the dictionary, you present them to a lame electorate that sanctions them without blinking and you offload a truck of pieds bananes who can’t believe their luck at what used to be called an august assembly, what do you exactly expect? When you add to that lot a group of turncoats who would sell nation and country to continue to enjoy the advantages they now have, do you really believe that principles will suddenly fall on them from the sky? When you go and dust a Phokeer whose eloquent past in Egypt everyone is whispering about and entrust him with the responsibility of running the assembly, do you sincerely expect to see democracy at play and respect for the code of honour that was in place before?

So when a Maneesh Gobin looks at the people paying his salary straight in the eye and refuses to clear his name of the serious allegations he is being accused of, do you still believe he has an ounce of honour that entitles him to sit in the once august assembly? When he confirms, through his guilty silence, that he sat side by side with drug dealers and enjoyed a free meal and booze without giving a toss about the fact that they are destroying our youth and our country, do you think he still earns the right to draw a minister’s salary? When he fails, through his cowardly silence, to quash the allegation that he and his ministry gave a huge piece of our land to convicted drug dealers to be able to carry on killing our children and decimating our families freely, do you think his place is anywhere but with the criminals whose behaviour he condones and encourages?

But then again, is he not sitting in the right place after all? Next to Yogida Sawmynaden, the man who prays all the time but refuses to clear his name in Soopramanien Kistnen’s murder and the blatant theft of the constituency clerk’s salary of the latter’s widow; next to Rajanah Daliah, the guy who was introduced to the nation through his participation in the eat-and-drink-with-the-drug-dealers party; next to Ivan Collendavelloo, the hero of the Saint Louis movie…Heck, he is sitting right behind Mr Angus Road Attan Zot Pou Guetter! They have all served us the same line: The Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating so we have to keep our gobs shut until the enquiry is over. Try to press slightly for some accountability and the Sphynx rises from the Pyramids and repeats the same words: Didn’t you hear? The ICAC is enquiring.

And God bless the ICAC. It has turned into a court of law where anything whispered while it is enquiring has become sub judice – in a new constitution written, it would seem, while we were asleep. A great institution indeed as it never disappoints. It is still enquiring about Angus Road – 18 years but who is counting? It is enquiring about the Rs700 million Saint Louis gate – three years and still counting. It is enquiring about Yogida Sawmynaden – two and a half years but who cares to count? It will continue enquiring about Franklin and his friends in government for as long as the MSM is in power. But who dares to count?!