| | Media Commission or Freedom of Information Act | | | | Modifier la taille du texte: | A | | | A | | |
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| | Par:- Touria Prayag
On 18/06/2010 |
The tug of war between “La Sentinelle” and the political leaders holding the levers of state power has come to an end. Or has it? Well, the out-of-court settlement has been agreed. But it has left us with a terribly bitter after taste and a few legitimate questions: did we really need a court judgement, a judge, a string of lawyers and the Attorney General to tell us that journalists should be allowed into government offices for press conferences held by government ministers in a country which misses no opportunity to boast about the freedom of the press and access to information? Did we need a court judgement to tell us that a minister should not mistake a government office for his own personal property? That a minister, no matter how powerful he may think he is, is paid from taxpayers’ money and is accountable to tax payers for all his actions?
I derive little joy from this denouement for, while we showed a great deal of good will by listening to all the criticism and grievances levelled at us; while we tacitly and with a great deal of humility accepted that we may not always have been right; while as I said at the last press conference (in an intervention from which the MBC cut and chose what to broadcast), though we try our level best to present objective information by seeking it from various sources, at the end of the day, some of our politicians continue to treat information as if it were something one has to deserve, leaving us with no option but to publish the information we get from the sources willing to give it. It is a simple sort of logic. If one side feels so aggrieved, why don’t they provide the solution?
The out-of-court settlement initially stumbled on whether only the media judged “independent” should be entitled to access information held by those who are paid from taxpayers’ money. The chairman of “La Sentinelle” insisted on having the word “independent” removed from the agreement because it is not our fight only; it is a fight for freedom and democracy. For we are in an era where excesses are the order of the day and we cannot keep on running to court for judges to rule. Our political system is clogged up as it is and our judges have far better things to do than waste time ruling on the whims and fancies of those whose first contribution to the country has been to drag the government to court or to remind journalists of how vindictive they can be. We should welcome the agreement and its contents as a safeguard against any possible excesses. It is in the interest of everyone, under all governments. It is a great contribution to democracy and freedom.
This tug of war may also have brought to the forefront the good old debate about a “Media Commission”. I genuinely have no problem with this. The only thing is that this is the worst possible time to even start thinking about regulating the press. The wounds are still raw. Maybe the time is more suitable for talking about the Freedom of Information Act! | |
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| Emiliano Z | | | Most democratic countries have FOI legislation in place and, even then, the information sought is often hard to come by. But all in all, it offers some degree of transparency.
In countries where media commissions exist, their boards are usually stacked with party hacks, and they soon become but instruments used by the ruling party to suppress offside media. Who do you think would appoint the board members? | | | Kewal | | | To Media Prism
Freedom of Information applies to public entities and office holders, not to private businesses. | | | Baltazar | | | Un PM qui insulte le peuple. Quand on considère la liberté d'expression du PM quand il ne peut pas se maîtriser quand il est en colère, on se demande si ce n'est pas prioritaire de mieux éduquer les politiques avant le peuple. Les agissements de N.R envers le peuple mauricien ces derniers temps fait honte : Insulter les journalistes en les traitant d'imbéciles ( Rabin Bhujun ), insulter les planteurs grévistes de la faim de Riche-Terre: " Zot pena lesprit, zot pa koné si pa manzé, zot pou crévé ! ", perte de contrôle pour un micro qui ne fonctionne pas " li pa marsé ta pit.. " Est-que la vulgarité est devenue une composante de la culture mauricienne ? Le nombre de dirigeants frustrés augmente. Ce sont ces frustrés qui s'abusent de la liberté d'expression, pas les journalistes et ils abusent encore plus de leur pouvoir pour sanctionner tous ceux qui les critiquent, des critiques qu'ils interprètent mal et digèrent mal et les poussent à se venger injustement. Ces frustrés ne veulent pas apprendre de leurs erreurs, au contraire ils traitent l'intellectuel d'imbécile. C'est pervers ! La démocratie et la liberté sont affectées et le pays est au bord d'une révolution culturelle. Too many wild horses to tame ! Maurice l'Ile durable, je rêve ! | | | Jean Pense | | | Thanks Sun Tzu. I've read your wonderful piece of writing and it's just amazing. Perhaps Touria Prayag could have it edited and published in L'EXPRESS WEEKLY. Keep writing my friend, it's the new form of journalism which the LION PRINCE cannot stop despite all the new legislation he will try to put up... He has himself started something he cannot stop now ! LONG LIVE MAURITIUS, the real ! | | | Sun Tzu | | | The hoodlum at the helm
Consider the following litany of odious acts of commission or of culpable omission of a Prime Minister who claims to be a pukka (true) democrat, & try to detect the common thread:
1. During his first mandate as PM, between 1995 & 2000, he distinguished himself by slapping his Deputy in the face with a copy of Le Mauricien newspaper in the august National Assembly of ‘honourable gentlefolks’, because the latter had given an interview, after the bitter breakup of the coalition with Mr. Bérenger’s MMM, during which Mr. Purryag made certain accommodating and conciliatory comments towards Mr. Bérenger.
2. His second mandate in 2005 was remarkable and memorable by the way it started – breaking with tradition with design and intent, his new government was sworn in in a public ceremony in front of Government House, during which the President of the Republic, Sir Anerood Jugnauth, was jeered, insulted, abused, humiliated and savaged. There was at that time no love lost (& if truth be told, despite all their hypocrisy and pretense, there still is not) between the President and the newly elected Prime Minister. The self-proclaimed democrat showed complete disregard for the constitutional post. Due respect for the highest institution of the Republic was readily subordinated to his deep loathing for the person who represented it.
3. During this second mandate, he set out on a methodical, mindless & ruthless witch-hunt to root out all those in senior positions in the public sector, whom he considered, based on mere suspicion, hearsay, even tenuous or absent evidence, might harbour a modicum of sympathy for his opponents of the day. So it was that highly regarded and respected professionals like Mrs. Jyoti Jeetun, Chief Executive, Sugar Investment Trust (branded as a Bérengiste) Mrs. Sooraya Nirsimooloo-Gayan, Director of Mahatma Gandhi Institute (because she happened to be the wife of then prominent member of MSM, Mr. Anil Gayan) Mrs. Shankuntala Jugnohum, Director of Human Resources, Mauritius Revenue Authority (alleged to leak information to Mr. Bérenger), were all summarily sacked by the judge, jury and executioner, posing himself as the great democrat. Mrs. Jeetun duly entered a case in the Courts against SIT for unfair dismissal, after being forced to expatriate herself to find employment in UK. The Courts recently adjudicated in her favour, after the habitual years of delay, during which she suffered irreparable material hardship, mental trauma and public stigmata, for which the millions of rupees the shareholders of SIT had to pay in damages were slight consolation, if any, & certainly far too little, much too late.
4. Leader of Air Mauritius Cabin Crew trade union, Mrs. Narvada Beenesreesingh, was once removed as Flight Purser at the last minute, without any explanation whatsoever, from an Air Mauritius flight from London to Mauritius on which the Prime Minister was a passenger, because she posed a…security threat to the latter, we were told later by the airline! The PM immediately after the incident (conveniently) dissociated himself from this decision of the airline management. Eager to obsequiously and servilely please the ‘lion prince’, the airline recidivated in June 2010. Again, one must presume the humane, just and compassionate democrat the Prime Minister professes to be had absolutely nothing to do with this second incidence of arbitrariness, victimisation and humiliation against Mrs. Beenesreesingh. Oh, no! He is far too smart and elegant to dirty his hands in such vile acts of oppression and repression. Rather leave these lowly tasks to his complaisant henchmen in the airline. The CEO, whose only unenviably mentionable claim to fame is to have presided in a short few years over the financial destruction of a national airline, which once was an object of national pride, painstakingly built over several decades by his competent and astute predecessors, was promptly rewarded for his ‘bons et loyaux services’ to the ‘lion prince’ by having his contract, which had been in sufferance for months, renewed for another three years.
5. Who can forget the callousness, insensitivity and inhumanity towards the hunger strikers of Riche Terre, destitute small growers who had been forcibly removed from their land to make way for the Jin Fei Chinese mega-project, suspiciously shrouded in the utmost opacity and secrecy? Whilst the attempt of the strikers at blackmailing the government on the eve of legislative elections is inexcusable and condemnable, the violence of the language used by the quintessentially democratic Prime Minister to berate & lambaste them is no less unbecoming of someone in the supreme position of leadership in the country. “To pas konner si to pas manzer, to pou crever”, he is reported as having said about them. There is no substitute for firmness when one is in a leadership position & is called upon to take difficult and unpopular decisions. Nonetheless, firmness is not incompatible with empathy & respect for human dignity. Too much asking of the ‘lion prince’, for whom these poor growers were mere fodder, I hear you say?
6. No less remarkable is the treatment meted out to his former Minister of Finance, Rama Sithanen, in the run up to the last General Elections. After giving the latter hope in vain that he would be on the list of Labour Party candidates, he was duly & inexplicably dumped, despite his able & laudable stewardship of the economy through the most severe economic crisis the world has experienced since the Great Depression. Worse still the Prime Minister unabashedly reneged on his previous defense of taxes on residential property and savings interest, which were introduced, it can only be, with the Prime Minister’s endorsement and blessing by Rama Sithanen. Talk of gratitude and collective responsibility! Either the Prime Minister has no notion of matters financial, and he was, as he alleged ex-post facto, hoodwinked into accepting ill-inspired tax measures, which is a matter of grave concern for public governance, or he is of utmost bad faith. We are inclined to think the latter. Despite all his faults, real or perceived, Mr. Sithanen, who was Deputy Prime Minister in his government, ought to have been treated with more honesty and dignity. Again, the ‘lion prince’ demonstrated that in his desire to cling to power, loyal collaborators and servants are expendable and disposable ‘sacrificial lambs’.
7. Where the gallant ‘ lion prince’, who boasts and prides himself of being a woman’s man and a great defender of the feminine cause, was caught completely off guard, let his mask unwittingly and revealed his true self was on the May Day rally podium of the l’Alliance de l’Avenir, a few days before the poll. If Aragon wrote, and Jean Ferrat sang, poetically that ‘la femme est l’avenir de l’homme’, woman-folk got short shrift on that day. Indeed, remonstrating his Director of Communication, Ms. Nita Deerpalsingh, for a malfunctioning microphone, the Prime Minister addressed her by that most degrading cuss word one could use against woman, whore, slut, harlot, or in creole ‘pitin’. He realised the damaging blunder he had committed by revealing his true self, i.e. as one without any respect whatsoever for the dignity of women, despite all his pretension to the contrary to beguilingly woo the feminine vote. He tried to justify the unjustifiable, firstly, by risibly claiming that that abominably injurious epithet against woman-folk was in fact hurled at the microphone, and secondly, that his opponents had insulted people more viciously! The ‘lion prince’ had struck back at the benighted electorate…
8. The advertising and invitational boycott orchestrated against media group La Sentinelle is another feather in the cap, or perhaps more appropriately ‘trophy’, in the great democrat’s crusade in punishing, silencing & quashing all contradiction, dissension or difference of opinion. Let’s not be fooled by the conciliatory tone he adopted of late after La Sentinelle entered a Court case against the government. We were at pains to guess what the Attorney General might well have offered before the judge by way of justifying explanation for this undemocratic systematic boycott. It was no surprise then that the government was forced into cowing down to avert the judicial action proceeding and causing it huge embarrassment by its predictable outcome. Let us not be duped naively by the amicable settlement either. There were sinister and sordid motives to harm La Sentinelle how else can one explain that the Prime Minister condoned the actions of his ministers who made no bones about the boycott (Jugnauth, Hanoomanjee, Bodha)? Or, the fact that soon after the newly elected government assumed office, there was a coordinated slew of correspondence from government institutions terminating abruptly and for lame reasons their subscriptions to the media group’s newspapers? And Air Mauritius? Newspapers given freely by the media group were said to be ‘too heavy’ to ‘airlift’!!? Again, the ‘lion prince’ kept his hands clean in the whole sordid boycott, and came out smelling of roses by distancing himself in the public eye from the crass and loutish acts of ministers of his coalition partner. Not everyone was tricked, however, by his real totalitarian intentions – simply, the mask has been tactically donned again and mellifluous words waft from behind it, the better to ensnare when the target is caught off guard timely.
9. One has to admit that it was misplaced and inopportune for Mr. Rabin Bhujun to interrogate the Prime Minister about the boycott of La Sentinelle at a press conference called by the latter to speak about his overseas mission. The purport of his questioning, his aggressiveness and his persistence were all completely inappropriate, especially, as the Prime Minister rightly reminded him, the matter was sub judice. It was understandably human of the Prime Minister to be vexed by the posture adopted by Mr. Bhujun. However, that being said, he is the Prime Minister and, as such, he has a duty to be able to demonstrate that even when confronted with the worst provocation, he keeps his calm, self-control and composure, and does not respond to disrespect with verbal assault, abuse and insult, like he did against Mr. Bhujun. Again the mask came off, & insults, such as stupid, ridiculous, brainless, imbecile, were hurled at Mr. Bhujun, for everyone to witness the real character of the person. He does not accept accountability, period.
10. Talking of his overseas mission, let’s indeed consider carefully his narration. Whilst he was in London (for what, we still don’t know), the British Foreign Secretary, Mr. William Hague, learnt of his presence in the city and graciously accepted to receive him, ‘at short notice’, in his private residence, we are told. This provided the opportunity for the Prime Minister to raise the question of the claim of Mauritius to sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago. This calls for the following comments and questions:
(i) Instead of finding the invitation of Mr. Hague as slighting, he boastfully trumpets it as an honour!
(ii) What was he doing in London, on official mission at taxpayers’ expense, that he was so readily available, ‘at short notice’ to respond to Mr. Hague’s ‘private’ invitation?
(iii) Why did he not solicit in advance, as part of his official visit programme in London, an official meeting with British Prime Minister, Mr. David Cameron, or at the very least, with the Deputy PM, Mr. Nick Clegg?
(iv) When, in his editorial, Mr. Raj Meetarbhan legitimately fields some pointed questions about his London mission, the Prime Minister taxes him of being a ‘diplomacy ignoramus’! Touchy, the Prime Minister, about his London jaunts, wouldn’t you say!?
(v) We know that the Prime Minister is an advocate of, and adept at, ‘quiet diplomacy’. In fact, so quiet that even the purposes of his official missions to London are kept completely quiet! No-one is informed of how he uses his time when in the British capital, an unavoidable place of sojourn to anywhere on planet Earth! All roads lead to…London.
Finally, can we ask the great democrat the ‘lion prince’ claims to be, where are all his long dated promises to introduce new legislation to strengthen democratic freedom in Mauritius? Equal Opportunities Act, Freedom of Information Act, Fiscal Responsibility Act, electoral reforms, judicial reforms, party political funding, private TV stations? We know, and have come to accept, that he is ‘a bit slow’, as Vice-President Chettiar once said, but one can be forgiven to begin to show signs of impatience and incredulousness. It is his third mandate as Prime Minister, you see…And, oh yes, at the very beginning of his third term in office, legislation to circumscribe the media, and define their ‘rights & privileges against their duties and obligations’ is his pressing priority. Are you surprised?
| | | ASH | | | Quote " Our political system is clogged up "
Unquote : Did you mean 'Our judicial system"? | | | NDLR | | |
(...) Mansoor/Sithanen ont affaibli l'ile Maurice avec leurs recettes de la Banque Mondiale. On a qu'à voir les chiffres d'endettement extérieur du pays divulgués au Parlement mardi. SVP arretez de diaboliser tout les gens qui ont eu le courage de se révolter contre ces deux economistes (...). Et on sait qu'on peut compter sur la Sentinelle pour mettre sur votre page principale l'enregistrement des deux appels de Mons. Sithanen a Rashid Imrith (...)
| | | Jean Pense | | | Thanks Touria for letting us know that the MBCTV did not show everything that you said. Mr Ramyead did not learn his journalism lessons very well I see. Un monsieur prétentieux comme tout !!! WHAT WE NEEDS IS OBVIOUSLY A FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT and one which works, not the Bokassa or Mobuttu type !!! | | | Media Prism | | | Let's talk about FoI Act. I challenge the corporate media to investigate shady deals with Big Biz. Just one example. Citizen Subron has time and again revealed how the previous MoF has chosen not to disclose elements of MAAS docs. Why did the media remain silent on such a blatant abuse of power? Surely such a serious offense would not have escaped the scrutiny of, say, Canadian or New Zealand media. Instead of a rogue, the guy was promoted as a messiah. | |
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