Pagetemplate

The former president France Albert Rene, has used an organ of the government which his party has been in control of for the last 29 years to distort the history of our country to justify his political ambition for political power at all costs.

This week the Seychelles Nation, a daily newspaper financed by public funds but in absolute editorial control of the President of Seychelles - which he uses for party political propaganda purposes – published an “interview” with the former president who is still the de jure leader of the SPPF.

The heading of the article “I felt it was my duty to liberate my people from colonialism” is one of those misleading but self-serving statements that Albert Rene has propagated over the last 29 years, while in absolute control of the state funded media – radio and television and Nation - that deliberately distorts historical facts.

Over the past 29 years, Rene has never allowed anyone, either on the radio or television or the Nation to refute his self-serving view of our history. Research and publications that challenge or refute the claims by Rene about his political past – or even those that expose some of the things he has done in the pursuit of political power, (e.g. the bombs) but is now probably too ashamed to admit, are denied to the people of Seychelles or misused for his personal benefit and aggrandisement .

The history of Seychelles and that of Albert Rene, has never been one of struggle against colonialism. It could not have been, just as it was not the case in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the Caribbean to a large extent. All of us, including Albert Rene, are the descendants of the colonialists for there has never been any indigenous population in Seychelles. At least in Canada, Australia and New Zealand there were indigenous inhabitants.

Seychelles, as an entity populated by human beings, started life as a colonial outpost serving the interests of the colonialists that settled here. Even the slaves – who were all of black skin from the continent of Africa - were colonialists because their existence depended upon the economic output of the outpost.

By the time Rene was old enough with the privilege of a good education, that colonial outpost had become an almost independent economic entity – although part of the British Empire. Whether the Seychelles as an economic entity was viable in the long term, to provide economic prosperity for the growing number of its inhabitants, is what distinguished Rene from Mancham when they were both budding politicians in the sixties.

When Rene started his political agitation to have the Seychelles break away from within the British Empire and to set out on its own as a separate political entity, as the Americans did, he was not even in Seychelles. He was in London, at the epicentre of the British Empire. Unlike those of his contemporaries from the continent of Africa, the British Empire was not trampling upon Rene’s culture or his people’s economic interests. In fact the opposite was the case, for Britain exercised a benign rule on this colonial outpost of its empire.

Although the economy of the islands could not give the population as good a standard of living as could be found in Britain at the time, we enjoyed full civil liberties with the right and freedom to agitate for independence. The vast majority of our people of that time were not under the yoke of colonialism but that of the grand-blanc -descendants of the colonialists of French origin - the small minority that controlled all the land, the same small minority that Rene fraternised with and was part of its inner circle as a member of the exclusive Seychelles Club. At that time the club would not allow anyone to be a member who had black skin pigmentation regardless of his economic status.

Rene, however, used the legitimate struggles of the Africans on the continent to pretend that his struggle for political power was synonymous with theirs – at least to the outside world. He misled the UN-decolonisation committee (and the world) with pictures showing some of his compatriots agitating for independence, an event Rene stage managed under the pretext they were marching for cheaper rice to be available on the island. He used his privileged education not to enlighten the rest of (mostly less educated) compatriots but to mislead them into supporting his ambition for power.

When in an issue of the Seychelles Weekly dated June 5th 1964 Rene’s political ambitions for power at all costs (including the use of violence) were exposed by Mancham in an article entitled “Independence – is it realistic?”, Rene - who had then just arrived in Seychelles from London, after stopping in Kampala, Dar Es Salam and Nairobi reposted by sending a letter to the newspaper which Mancham did not hesitate to publish. In it Rene said “the immorality of the colonial system is recognised throughout the world”, a generalisation that did not apply to our circumstances as a colonial outpost on an island that had no indigenous population. Those kinds of generalisations were to remain the hallmark of Rene throughout his political career, especially as a dictator espousing communism. But Rene never allowed anyone to publish critical opinions of him or his policies in his own party publication.

He masterminded a bombing campaign to destabilise the Seychelles civil society and when confronted with evidence in court he did not have the guts to claim martyrdom, as the real freedom fighters on the continent were doing. Instead, he spent vast sums to bring the best legal brains available outside Seychelles to keep him out of prison. In his next attempt, the coup d’etat, he got away with it but then turned his violence on his detractors and political opponents.

In his political life Rene never entertained dissent or an alternative point of view. As President he imprisoned his opponents and detractors without charge or trial. That part of the history which took place after our independence Michel and Rene have conveniently swept under the carpet from the generation that wasn’t born then.

So has the turmoil due to mercenary incident, when Rene’s dictatorship was placed under physical attack for the first time. Equally, the mutiny of 300 soldiers at the Union Vale barrack, in early August 1982, which made world headlines when soldiers took control of the radio station to broadcast an appeal to British Prime Minister Thatcher to support them, is also conveniently brushed under the carpet. So was the incident that saw Rene cut short his attendance of the Commonwealth Heads of State summit in Harare in 1986 to return to Seychelles in Rajiv Ghandi’s private plane to sack Ogilvy Berlouis– his comrade in arms in the coup d’etat – as defence minister, (as well as other cronies in the security apparatus of the one-party state) without any explanation to the public. That was the level of contempt Rene had for the population at large.

So what is the legacy of Albert Rene? He is using the control he has of the government funded mass media once again – on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of our independence - to propagate a distorted history of our country and his part in it, but conveniently cover up the violence and political machinations that his one party state promoted in order to keep him in power. Soon, of course, the people will be able to know for themselves the full facts our history and, therefore, make an informed judgment of him.

(Paul Chow)