Publicité

It won’t go away

20 juillet 2013, 08:50

Par

Partager cet article

Facebook X WhatsApp

lexpress.mu | Toute l'actualité de l'île Maurice en temps réel.

So it was Ashwin Dookun who got the boot after all. I love the way this was done; no explanation given, no reason put forward to explain why Dookun had to go; just that his contract had expired. I mean, he was after all the President of a parastatal body, wasn’t he? He was being paid out of public funds, wasn’t he?

 

 

I know that in monarchies, people serve at the pleasure of the regent but we’re not in a monarchy however much some in government would like us to be. In democracies, especially modern ones, when a political nominee paid by public funds is asked to leave, an explanation is given. Was Dookun asked to go because he was found guilty of irregular behaviour? In an interview published in last Friday’s «l’express», Dookun reacting to the fact that government as a whole had disowned him and literally condemned his stance in the procurement of 65 buses affair, invited the “competent authorities” to take whatever sanctions they felt had to be taken if they really believed he was in the wrong.

 

 

By that, obviously, Dookun meant if government believed that he had acted wrongly, dishonestly and fraudulently in the ongoing dispute then they should refer the matter to the police. For that dispute is all about procedures and the violation thereof. About integrity and propriety versus interference and undue infl uence.

 

 

So for Anil Bachoo, Dookun’s Nemesis has announced, under the cover of parliamentary immunity, that he will sue the former chairman for defamation. The Central Procurement Board (CPB), the body at the heart of the dispute, has threatened legal action but hasn’t acted on the threats so far. Yet, in the above mentioned interview, Dookun dares the CPB chairman to take him to the cleaners. We haven’t heardanything so far.

 

 

But getting rid of Dookun isn’t going to make the problems go away. It doesn’t nullify the fact that last year’s bid exercise was cancelled by the CPB after undue pressure was applied on the board of the CNT for them to agree to amend the bid document in an attempt, claims Dookun, to favour one particular bidder. It doesn’t cancel out the fact that a disgruntled CPB, seemingly breaking all rules of objectivity, chose to annul the bid exercise after unethical attempts at interference didn’t work.

 

 

It doesn’t undo what happened next; that commuters had to pay for the fact that the ministry and the CPB didn’t get their way in 2012 like they did in 2005 when they decided to purchase the 2007 batch buses. When yet again, the CPB and the Ministry of Public Infrastructure broke all the rules of good governance and bent the principles of public procurement because they could.

 

Yes, ten people died on the 3rd of May, as the result of the CPB and the Ministry of Public Infrastructure getting their way in 2005 and not getting their way in 2012.

 

 

And it’s Dookun who gets the sack!