Deepa Bhookhun
7 December 2007
Port Louis — He will subject a whole nation to months and months of infuriating procrastination, act like a dictator, expect people to read his mind, will happily (and sometimes rudely) evade all questions pertaining to what everybody wants to know and go about his merry (and sometimes grim) business.
And then impossibly, when you least expect it and you've given up on the man, he will come clean (well, almost), tell you all you need and want to know (and even more) and will spring upon you his magical solution to the problem at hand.
He repeated the same pattern at his press conference last Wednesday. He held a press conference knowing full well that everybody who was listening to him only wanted to know the details of the agreement he had reached with the corporate sector of the sugar industry. Yet he spent the better part of the press conference doing a recap of the situation. Eventually when people could barely contain themselves and very nearly screamed out of frustration, he got down to serious business. Lucky he had a plane to catch!
Does he do it on purpose? Is he in fact just a devious man?
In any event, Ramgoolam came out of an impossible situation with flying colours. One may disagree with the method - Ramgoolam was confrontational to the extreme - at least publicly, bordering on the insulting, often he wore his warrior\politician cloak and very nearly confused the economic issue at hand with a racial one and, in his stride, excluded his ministers of Finance and Agro industry (he probably had his reasons but I guess he will never tell us what they are) and single-handedly - with the help of advisors who on the face of it had no legitimacy whatsoever to negotiate on behalf of the people - tackled this whole complex issue.
What for? To fight a battle, he says he believes in. It is debatable whether he won that battle on every front especially with regards to the contracts that bind the Central Electricity Board (CEB) to independent power producers. I guess we'll find out in due time.
But Ramgoolam certainly won in many respects; the most important victory is not so much what he got out of the sugar industry but the message he sent; crumbs is simply not good enough anymore. 'We're all in it together' is henceforth the new adage.
Is this a good reading of what happened? I have no idea and I don't think it even matters that much. What matters is that this is the way this will be read by people; prime minister Ramgoolam has gained many brownie points with public opinion. Is this the reason he got involved in the negotiations? Probably not, if any credit is given to what the grapevine has been saying for some time now.
Then is it out of conviction? Preposterous, isn't it? Since when does a politician have conviction?
Yes, puzzling man indeed.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 L'Express. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
