According to very reliable sources from Arpent Vert, it has been decided that the maverick SNP MNA, Jean Francois Ferrari, will be back in the National Assembly irrespective of the election results in Mont Fleuri’s bye-election. This is because the Leader of SNP, Wavel Ramkalawan, has promised to give Ferrari back his seat on proportional basis even if he loses the election. This would mean that either Regina Alcindor or Hardy Lucas will ultimately be rotated to make way for Ferrari. The bye-election is therefore, at best, an exercise in futility. The SPPF dramatically announced that it will not be taking part in the elecetion on Thursday 26th June; leaving the two opposition parties to slug it out for the much coveted seat. The election will be historic for many reasons but more importantly because it will be the first time that the SPPF fails to participate in an election in the country.
It is now known that after testing the waters at Mont Fleuri, SPPF concluded that they do not have enough popular support to pull an outright win. They have thus decided to abandon their bid and save the money it would have taken to fight this election for the 2011 general election. It is also said that President Michel is nervous that the customary SPPF voters might register a protest vote against the party after his government introduced a series of unpopular measures resulting in severe hardship to the ordinary Seychellois family. Thus, their failure to take part. Had the SPPF participated and won, it will have given them two thirds majority in the National Assembly, which is more than enough for them to change the Constitution; something which the SNP/DP alliance fought hard and was successful in preventing in the 2007 general elections. If Ferari loses, it will also mean that the SNP would automatically forego a precious seat in the National Assembly; something which they can ill-afford to do at the moment. In the meantime, the leader of the Democratic Party, (DP), Mr. Paul Chow, has sent a letter to Mr. Ramkalawan at the eleventh hour expressing his wish to continue their electoral collaboration as a united opposition in these elections. Ramkalawan, for his part, has categorically turned down the offer in a letter dated 24th June 2008 urging DP not to field any candidate and opting to go it alone in the bye-election.
Consequently, DP has fielded a candidate of its own namely, Mr. Frank Elizabeth, and will be going all out to win the seat outright. Mr. Elizabeth was the proportionately elected member of the National Assembly as a result of an electoral pact between the two opposition parties in the general election of 2007. Mr. Elizabeth was removed from the National Assembly by Mr. Ramkalawan after a series of bizarre incidents which culminated in the SNP leader deciding to breach the electoral agreement with DP and cease his party’s participation with DP in the National Assembly. At the time Ramkalawan offered a mere speculative possibility that Elizabeth might (or might not) vote with the SPPF in the Assembly giving the SPPF two thirds majority, as justification for the removal.
Mr. Elizabeth’s record in the Assembly speaks for itself. He has always stood for the national interest as oppose to partisan or self interest. He is remembered nationally as the only opposition candidate who had the courage to vote in favour of an agreement between France and Seychelles whereby France agreed to patrol the Seychelles Exclusive Economic Zone to prevent poaching of our fisheries by foreign vessels and fishermen. All his SNP colleagues in the National Assembly abstained on the motion to approve the agreement for reasons not deemed worthy of consideration.
Immediately after he ended the agreement with DP, Ramkalawan swiftly ran to State House where he shared hot tea and rub shoulders with the President. After one of his many famous meetings with President Michel, Ramkalawan told SBC in an exclusive interview that he was glad the people of Seychelles had not elected him President as President Michel is under a lot of pressure and does not sleep easy at night. It is not clear whether it was President Michel who imparted this to Ramkalawan, in order to put him off his own presidential bid. But whatever President Michel told Ramkalawan at State House, it worked as Ramkalawan took the bait, hook, line and sinker. After sympathizing with President Michel’s predicament, Ramkalawan and SNP then went on to vote unanimously together with the SPPF in favour of a budget which gave Ramkalawan and James Michel a huge salary increase.
Ramkalawan recently wrote in Regar that all dialogues with SPPF have failed. He has also walked out of the National Assembly on no less than three occasions since. However, surprisingly the other SNP MNAs failed to walk out of the Assembly in solidarity with Ferari, recently when the impetuous SNP MNA stunned everyone by resigning his seat in the National Assembly causing a precarious bye-election in that district where he had been elected by a slim majority of only 64 votes less than one year ago. Although Ramkalawan is said to be miffed by Ferrari’s antics in private, he has come out in public to support his bid for re-election as the Mont Fleuri Member of Parliament, dubbing the election as “a referendum on democracy.” However, many view this election as a referendum on Jean Francois Ferrari instead!