Sedition, ladies and gentlemen. The act of inciting people to rebel against the authority of the state (or the monarch, the dictionary fittingly adds!). In case you’re not horrified yet, the synonyms of the word sedition are “rebellion”, “mutiny”, “revolt”, “riot” or “insurgency”. And there I was thinking the police and Navin Ramgoolam’s government couldn’t and wouldn’t go further down the road to self-destruction. That the sense of self-preservation would kick in and force reason upon them.

How did we get there? When did the police stop being a service to the community with the sole aim of protecting the citizens ? When did the arrest of a person, a serious deprivation of an individual’s freedom, guaranteed by the Constitution become a political weapon, a weapon of repression? In Pravind Jugnauth’s case, the decision to arrest him was already made on Wednesday morning but no one gave a thought to the charge that would be brought against him.

It didn’t occur to anyone at the Line Barracks that to arrest someone, to deprive a citizen of his most fundamental right, one needs to have a very solid reason.

When Jugnauth’s lawyer Roshi Badhain started questioning the police about the reason for Pravind Jugnauth’s arrest, our patriots in blue realised that they didn’t know. Or rather, they didn’t have much evidence against Jugnauth, save Sheila Bappoo’s word for whatever “it” was. I think this is deserving of a medal on the 12th of March, don’t you? Basically what this means is that they don’t give a damn about procedures, about the very fundamentals of any justice system. They will deprive you of your freedom to make a point. A political point.

Then they will release you because mostly the grounds they have for arresting you don’t stand the test of justice. But you would have been, for a given period of time “provisionally arrested”. The minister responsible for the police, a big fan of the perfidious Albion, should take some time off next time he’s visiting London, to learn more about how the English police use the power of arrest.

It is not until and unless the police have enough evidence that would stand in a court of law that they would dare deprive a citizen of his or her freedom. Because unless you can prove that the person is guilty of what you’re reproaching him, they remain free because of that most noble principle that’s called the presumption of innocence.

Before the Prime minister gets on his high horse and starts shouting on rooftops that we are biased, I’ll invite him to think about the time when he appointed Pravind Jugnauth minister of Finance and what Jugnauth’s first official act was – to prevent “l’express” from attending his press conference. I’ll invite him to remember the time when the MSM burnt a copy of “l’express”. It’s not about bias and it’s not personal. It’s about principles.

Our perspective doesn’t change. Theirs do.