MAKING SENSE
By: F.L. Gill
I wrote the article below in response to an editorial comment printed in the Seychelles Independent. The editor of that newspaper refused to publish it. He indicated he feared legal retaliation for some of the statements contained in the article. I offered to take full responsibility for the stated facts and opinions. He still refused. In return I refused to send in any more articles. I refused to be made a pawn by a newspaper either sympathetic to the SPPF cause and using my articles to pretend that Seychelles has a free press, or alternatively, to publish in a newspaper whose editor lacked the necessary courage to print the truth.
In the face of SPPF manipulation, lies and underhandedness, our newspaper editors must find the personal psychological resources to develop the necessary strong character and internal fortitude to print the truth. It is the only way we can gain true freedom for our country.
Over the past several years the SPPF have used a rigged legal system to file arguably frivolous suits against any who dare print the truth. This effort has been designed to send a chill wind across our nation to freeze our minds and send fear down our collective spines.
This is to make us fear the truth. Our laws should not be so easy to manipulate to prevent the full airing of opinions. This is especially so when the opinions aired concerns public figures. Even falsehoods should be tolerated if it is not spoken or written with malicious intent. This is the only way to ensure that all opinions get a full and fair public review. This type of public debate is the foundation of democracy and liberty itself. So it is not surprising that the SPPF disfavors such a system of open debate.
Fortunately, as with all tyrannies, they eventually encourage countervailing courage to pursue liberty. This newspaper, in printing what the other would not, has shown the necessary courage. I thank them for the opportunity to respond to SPPF propaganda. Here is the article that has waited months to be brought back from certain oblivion.
Ghostly Stories
This is in rebuttal to a comment published by “GHOST” in the October 19th 2006 issue of the Seychelles Independent. Mr. Ghost alighted from his grave to vote for the SPPF in the recent election along with his other comrade cadavers. They have taken some considerable offense at my audacity in pointing out Ghosts do not have, and do not deserve, the right to vote in Seychelles’s elections. That right I had pointed out belongs to living Seychellois. A point the SPPF seems to disagree with.
Nevertheless Mr. Ghost, like his living SPPF comrades, recklessly throws out lies, half truths, and means personal attacks in a characteristic effort to disparage anyone who challenges the miserable, ghoulish SPPF record of brutality, torture, murder and cheating to stay in power at all costs. I will set the record straight on some of Mr. Ghost’s effort to blur the truth, so we can stop living in fear of SPPF Ghosts.
Mr. Ghost says I am fermenting violence in Seychelles and will not suffer if my homeland is bathing in bloodshed. Ghost forgets that I was not there when he was shoulder to shoulder with his SPPF comrades when they, in the middle of the night, murdered Seychellois and stole their liberty on June 5th 1977. I was not there when you Ghosts marched shoulder to shoulder with African shock troops and massacred Seychellois who did not want to be occupied anymore – spilling their blood in the sacred soil of the motherland where their mothers and great grandmothers are buried. I was not there when you Ghosts murdered Simon Denousse, after pulling out his finger nails and inflicting on him the most brutal torture only because he loved freedom. I was not there when Ghosts murdered Gerard Horeau in London because he dared speak out in favor of our liberty. I was not there when ghosts kidnapped Hassanalli, tortured and murdered him and unceremoniously dumped his body in the deep blue sea so none would ever discover the dastardly crime – only because you had a political score to settle. I was not there when you Ghosts, and your SSU goon squad, pulled the Leader of the Opposition and other members of the People’s representatives onto the floor of the People’s House and brutally beat them. Doing this after getting orders directly from the Ghost in Chief to perpetrate this crime against the people. So Mr. Ghost you do not need me to ferment violence in Seychelles. You Ghosts have shown us Seychellois you can do this quite well all by your gruesome selves. We all know you survive in power by feasting on our innocent blood and nourishing yourselves on our murdered innocent flesh.
But what we Seychellois must realize is that you Ghosts live and thrive only because we fear you. When we stop fearing you, we will banish you to the fiery depths of Hades where you can dine on the rotting and burning flesh of your murderous comrades Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot instead of innocent Seychellois. You Ghosts are put on notice that you cannot continue to create the conditions for violence by your dictatorial policies, and then scream foul, when what you have instigated and created comes to pass. It is simply a matter of reaping what you sow. If you work in harmony towards peace, democracy and stability that is what we will reap. If you do the opposite, as you have, you will have the opposite. It is within our God given right to free ourselves from your bondage. We are not condemned to live in fear of you Ghosts forever.
You ask me if I want to bring to Seychelles a system where moderate income people are evicted from their property because they do not have a sewer line. I say to you no, I do not want a system in Seychelles where a Democratic government signs agreements to install a sewer line to moderate income individuals and a subsequent Republican government refuses to honor the contract. Then spends hundreds of millions of dollars putting in sewer lines and other infrastructure to rich businesses and to their rich friend’s homes instead. This is not just. I have paid a heavy price fighting this system as you point out. In the process I have personally provided more moderate and low income housing, to perhaps more people, than the SPPF has done in its thirty years in power in Seychelles.
But what I do want to see in Seychelles is a system where the rule of law is supreme. A system where Ghosts cannot murder and call it suicide and not stand before the bar of justice for the crime. A system where the Ghost in Chief cannot have a fellow Seychellois beaten to inches of his life simply for having a love affair, and do so with impunity. A system where the national assets of the country are not mercilessly, systematically and cynically plundered by Ghosts so they can fill their fat bellies until they lose sight of their toes, all without punishment. I want a system where Ghost drug dealers are not allowed to ply their destructive trade so they can collect blood money from our young and vulnerable and do so without fear of prosecution. I want a system where Seychellois are respected in their own country and not where foreigners have more sway, simply by paying off the Ghost in Chief a monthly stipend. A system where Seychellois can freely go to any public beach or island in their own country without asking permission of Mauritian guards to do so. A system where the poor and disadvantaged are not only promised care, but actually get the care they deserve and are promised. A system where any Seychellois can do business freely with minimum taxation and regulations, as a matter of right, and not only if they kneel to the SPPF guardians. I want a Seychelles that increases in prosperity from year to year. Not a Seychelles where we see our standard of living declining year after year due to SPPF economic incompetence and mismanagement. These are some of the things I want in Seychelles.
You say my brother and me have an active imagination because I predicted you will attack, torture and imprison me for coming out against your dictatorship. Mr. Ghost I also predicted you will come out with personal attacks as your first reaction. You have already proved me right. I predict once more you will prove me right on my other predictions as well. But believe me; I have a strong desire to avoid harm to myself. There is nothing I would have preferred more than to continue in my relative anonymity, continuing to amass wealth and petty luxuries like the BMW 6 series convertible that bothers you so much. But after your cheating in the last election, I could not keep silent while others fight these battles for our freedom at great personal cost. I had to do my small part in this effort. Even the great Indian Ocean is made up of small drops of water. Well here I am. One more small drop of water in the great ocean of effort needed to banish you Ghosts to the underworld you have thus far so valiantly avoided.
While you say I have a house in Guam, you are right. But I also have a home in Praslin in my homeland. You cannot continue to divide us by saying this Seychellois has this passport or that big house, so he or she does not belong or have less of a right to speak in Seychelles, their homeland. All while you Ghosts coddle foreign criminals who pay you. Seychelles belongs to Seychellois. All Seychellois wherever they are. This is our homeland. We all have the right to defend it and the freedom you have stolen from it. You may say this is extremist. I am not surprised that you would say this. But I say to you extremism in defense of liberty and freedom is no vice; it is a virtue to be sought and admired.
