THE REAL MEANING OF OUR NATIONAL DAY

SPPF PAYS LIP SERVICE TO THE TRUE PURPOSE OF JUNE 18

June 18 is a very recent event in our nation’s short but turbulent political history. 13 years ago on that date the people of Seychelles were asked to vote in a referendum – witnessed by international observers - to approve a new constitution for our country, the third in our short history and they did so by a large majority.  

June 18, recalls, in historical terms, the turbulent political history of our small nation, if nothing else. Only fourteen years ago our country was a one party dictatorship under the iron grip of France Albert Rene ably assisted by James Michel. The dictatorship lasted 16 years. And would have lasted longer had former President Mancham and myself in exile in the UK, not joined forces to form the Crusade for Democracy in Seychelles to spearhead an international public campaign in the press - as well as with western governments - to restore democracy in our beloved Seychelles. Our efforts in the international arena reinforced the growing dissatisfaction from within the country at the time, where others were agitating for political change and right to free expression and association.

In April 1991, Albert Rene and James Michel were in total control of all the mass media as well as the instruments of political repression in Seychelles. No one was allowed, by pain of imprisonment without charge or trial, to publish anything in the printed words which Michel and Rene disapproved of. To own a fax machine needed the personal and expressed permission of Albert Rene, even though today SPPF propaganda is cynically trying to pretend that they brought the electronic age to our country.

Until June 18, 1993 Rene and Michel used all the instruments of coercion to suppress the inalienable rights of the people of Seychelles to chose their government in free and fair elections. The only political party allowed to operate – the SPPF – was made to pass a resolution in April 1991 that said that the Seychelles should forever remain a one party state.  Albert Rene was pictured on the state controlled radio and television telling his supporters and the nation at large that if multi-party democracy was to return to Seychelles he would resign as leader of the party and as President of the country. He was to repeat that intention to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth a few months later.

While Rene and Michel controlled all the levers of power in Seychelles since June 5, 1977, they failed to realise that the new world that emerged after the demise of communism was not going to be their oyster. From the modest beginning of an open letter to Albert Rene signed by Mancham (published as an advertisement in the Times of London in 1989 soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall), by April 1991 the world had started to take notice of the dictatorship that existed in our country. By the middle of 1991, the Crusade made a crucial breakthrough when the then Australian Minister of External Affairs – the Right Honourable ------------- agreed to receive Mancham at his office in Canberra. As soon as this was known to the world at large, every foreign ministry in the western world agreed to meet with Mancham.

In October 1991, soon after René arrived in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) summit, he told the then Secretary General, the Nigerian Emeka Anyaoku, that he was thinking of having a referendum to establish whether or not Seychelles should adopt a multiparty system. According to Anyaoku in his autobiography entitled The Inside Story of the Modern Commonwealth, he told Rene that “… if he went on with a referendum he would be running the risk of being accused of merely seeking ways of avoiding a multiparty system in Seychelles”. Anyaoku also claimed that Rene repeated the bluff he made in Seychelles in front of his party faithful, that he would resign the leadership of the party and the country if the referendum went against him.

In Harare, little did Rene realise that the Prime Ministers of Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand had already agreed, as a result of the Crusade’s campaign, to act in concert to tell Rene exactly the same message in no uncertain terms that the choice for the people of Seychelles was not between dictatorship and democracy. In the post communist era, countries that are dictatorships can only countenance democracy, Rene was told. It is an oxymoron to think that any free people would freely vote away their fundamental human rights.

With his political tail between his party legs Rene returned to Seychelles to discover that the resident ambassadors of Britain, France and USA were waiting for him with a letter giving him until December 5, 1991 to announce the restoration of the multiparty system or else they would denounce him in public in Seychelles itself.

With his bluff called, Rene called another Congress of the SPPF on 3rd December this time to tell a shocked party apparatchik that he had jettisoned the one-party state after all and would be holding elections on a multi-party basis. In recognition of the crucial role that he played in galvanising international pressure to force his hand, Rene faxed a personal invitation to former president Mancham in London inviting him to return to his country as a free man. Rene it seems can eat humble pie, but only privately.

For Rene, however, as usual his word would never be his bond. Instead of resigning as leader of his party and as President of the country as he threatened he would do if democracy was restored in Seychelles, he pretended to be a reformed dictator embracing democracy wholeheartedly – at least on the outside. But as the adage has it “a leopard never changes its spots.” Rene has, over the last 13 years, proved the saying right.

Rene has spent the last thirteen years undermining the public commitment to democracy he gave to the people of Seychelles on June 18th 1993. His government has never bothered to create a version of the 1993 Constitution that could be taught in the schools or even made available in the national library for people to read or to be sold in the only bookshop that has survived his communist era.

Instead, whenever and wherever he could not tamper with the letter of the Constitution he would tamper with the spirit of it. The most glaring manipulation of the spirit of the constitution is in the appointment of judges and the Chief Justice. His manipulation of the Constitutional Appointments Authority where he engineered the appointment one of his political crony as chairperson that made it possible for him to nominate politically correct judges, even unconstitutionally, is all too evident.

Given the decision to hold national celebrations throughout the month of June to mark 30 years of nationhood on the 29th, one would have thought that President Michel’s advisors would have recommended that, as the de-facto leader of our country, at least this year, he should have seized the occasion of our declared National Day to lead the nation in a moment of reflection and reconciliation. A country that has had three political milestones in such a short time – one of which of a violent nature - needs all the reassurances it can get.

June 18 should have been a moment to reaffirm our commitment and dedication to the future as a democracy in unity and reconciliation. To show real commitment to this spirit all political parties should have been involved in the preparation and orginsation of this event. For example, we could have had a member of each generation representing all political parties standing together reading the preamble to the constitution to the whole nation in a solemn moment of reflection and reaffirmation of our commitment to the goals of our Constitution which Rene, Michel and myself penned our signatures to.

Instead, Michel chose to make this event a party political one and made a party political speech. He paid only lip service to national unity and reconciliation, which is more than ever before necessary given the challenge the declining economy poses to whoever would lead our country after the election. He debased a solemn national moment for partisan politics in the quest for political power at all costs. But with Albert Rene literally breathing down his neck we could not have expected otherwise from James Michel. Regrettably, Michel missed the moment of statesmanship. History, nevertheless, will be the judge of him as it will be for his party leader.

Paul Chow

The writer is president and leader of the Democratic Party. On November 15, 1979 he was detained without charge or trial on the orders of Albert Rene and held at Union Vale prison for 9 months. He was released on July 29, 1980 and given 48 hours to leave the country or else. He sought and was granted political asylum in Britain. He returned to Seychelles as a free man on December 10th 1991 to re-launch the Democratic Party.