I WILL never begin to understand why nailing the facts onto one’s side of the argument is considered by Mr Vayid (“Le Mauricien” 17th January 2012) to be “arrogant”.

Does Mr Vayid remember what he was on about in his before-last reply of the 30th December 2011?

Let us concentrate only on the most enormous and important of his several clangers. First, he said that, contrary to what Ms Aisha Timol, Mr Ravin Dajee and I were saying, there was indeed a bank cartel operating in Mauritius resulting in banks having “the same interest rates, the same forex rates, the same malpractices, the same charges practically”. This was tantamount to accusing us three, banking professionals, of being untruthful and being frauds simply for stating the opposite of what he thinks. Embarrassingly, the Governor of the Bank of Mauritius himself, in an interview to “l’express Weekly” (6th January 2012), has since stated his view that there is “no collusion” between bankers and added, quite directly : “I don’t think they are a cartel.”

Case closed?

I would think so, even if he has refused to look at the interest rates, the forex rates, the practices and charges that clearly distinguish banks one from the other, including an Islamic Bank actually doing it without… any interest. At all ! Second, he made an argument that “the most opulent private sector companies favour the MCB which they largely control”. I offered Mr Vayid to consult, even if expost facto, the list of the 100 largest shareholders of MCB to face the fact that this is not true and he has not done so. He has not dared to! Instead, he has attempted some mathematics to disprove my affirmation that the MCB was “the most democratically owned company of the island”!

However, before setting off for his maths demonstration, he becomes either disingenuous or sloppy (the reader will decide), by transforming the above quote into “the most democratic of banks”, a phrase I have definitely not written andwhich he quotes from me, by transforming 8 precise words into 5 only, of which one word I did not even use to start with !... What part of “the most democratically owned company of the island” did he find difficult to understand? Has he found a more democratically owned company on the island than the MCB, with more than 18,000 shareholders, none of whom holds more than 3 % of shares?

His convoluted argument would have us believe (without referring to reality) that 685 shareholders owning 83 % of the bank equates to the local private sector “largely” controlling the MCB, which is well nigh impossible, for Pete’s sake, unless you make sweet oranges become prickly pears and suggest that the National Pension Fund is in cahoots with Anglo-Mauritius, Pictet & Cie with MDIT, Loreto Institute with Rose-Hill Transport Investments and that the various customer funds of foreign based State Street are, how does he put it ? into incentuous relations with who-the–hell-should-I-know, giving to a “handful of families the absolute control of the MCB”?

How laughable!

A handful of families, you say? Pray, what families? Surely, they do not include the ones strongly present today in Afrasia Bank, Bank One, Bramer Bank, ABC Banking? To look credible, name them, will you?

Case closed?

I would hope so, especially since, en passant, 685 shareholders holding 83 % of the MCB shares makes for an average of 0.12 % of shares per shareholder, which would make it, like in many listed companies in the world, extremely difficult for any collusion or smoky shareholder alliance, unless you start equating Warren Buffett with the worker-owned pension funds of IBM or Coca-Cola, for example.

Mr Vayid is not very kind to me and why should he be? After all, when you cannot win the argument by referring to the facts and be convincing through clear reasoning, your only chance seems to be to twist these facts, quote your opponent wrongly or try to shout him down as hard as you can. Mr Vayid was my teacher some 44 years ago. I have fond memories of these days but I am 61 today and I do not recall attempts at teaching me that name calling could be a substitute for arguments. I feel sorry for my old mentor today as he snarls “childish”, “petulant”, “puerile”, “trash”, contemptuously referring to my lack of “intelligence” and “maturity” instead of homing onto the facts and sticking with rationality, adding, for good measure, that I can not grasp “the fundamentals of a discussion” or understand my own bank’s statistics because my “training is obviously not complete”.

I confess! I am not perfect. I am neither pope, nor ayatollah. I am fallible! Contrary to him, I am human. However, the facts do remain very stubborn indeed and let it be known, again, that I do not take to swipes at my integrity lightly.

Philippe A. FORGET