MANCHAM: RENE CONDUCTED COUP AGAINST HIS OWN GOVERNMENT

Albert Rene is a living contradiction because he is probably the only person to have conducted a coup d’etat against his own government, according to former president James Mancham. Mancham was speaking at the joint SNP/DP rally at Bel Ombre on Sunday July 2 in front of a capacity crowd of thousands.

The former President said that he had deliberately stayed away from Seychelles during the month of June as a protest against the manipulation of the anniversary of our Independence by James Michel and the SPPF for purely partisan propaganda interest in furtherance of Michel’s presidential bid. Mancham said that the month of June should have been dedicated to a reflection by the whole nation about the economic and political situation the country finds itself in today.

“What liberation are we celebrating” Mancham told the crowd “throughout 200 years as a British colony we’ve never had one person classified as a political prisoner, in contrast to the period since the coup d’etat in June 1977, and many have also been killed, made to disappear while a large number of the population have fled the country seeking asylum in foreign lands.” The Seychellois have been more divided and suffered terribly since Rene introduced his one-party state after the coup d’etat than during the whole of the colonial period.

Mancham said that Rene’s SPPF propaganda has tried, over the years to castigate the illegal take over of the legitimate government of the newly independent Seychelles as a coup against the Mancham Government. “In reality Rene staged a coup against his own government because Rene swore allegiance to the government that took office with independence as Prime Minister.”

“If when Mr Michel had gone on an official trip overseas Vice-president Belmont had staged a coup, would it have been justified?” Mancham asked. That is what Rene did to Mancham the crowd was told.

July 14, 2006