Editorial
HAS THE JUDICIARY GONE MAD?
Judge Perera has awarded R 40,000 damages to a young girl who brought a suit for medical malpractice against a government doctor and the government recently.
The same judge this week controversially awarded the former Principal Secretary of Health, Mr. Maurice Lousteau Lalande the sum of R 350,000 damages against Regar Newspaper in a defamation case for ‘injury’ to his reputation.
Many are now asking whether the life of a Seychellois child is worth less than the reputation of a civil servant? It has been the trend by the Judiciary to make astronomical awards of damages in favour of Ministers, Principal Secretaries and high Government officials in general, but especially when Regar is the defendant.
However, the Judiciary is less generous to ordinary litigants especially where there is injuries to life and limb when the Government is the defendant.
HAS THE JUDICIARY LOST ITS MARBLES?
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO PEOPLE PLUS?
Kreol Week – a week of festivities and fun, wine and dining by a privileged few at the State’s expense - mostly by government employees who are given time off to do so; a week where school children are given time off from their studies so that the government can claim there is youth participation; a week where the elderly, mostly those that belong to the SPPF controlled twaziem az (3rd Age) would be conveniently paraded in front of the cameras to give the semblance of mass appeal.
This year, the festivities took off with an unusual, if not, controversial proposition by the young catholic priest, Father Alcindor. In an open air mass which was attended mostly by those who would turn out in the rest of the festivities virtually as a matter of obligation to the governing political system, he made what many consider not only an outrageous but spiritually empty proposition that the Catholic Church should say mass entirely in kreol language.
In the extract of his sermon that was broadcast on SBC, Father Alcindor appeared all fired up not about God, Jesus Christ or our salvation but about kreol – the language not the person. According to Father Alcindor, the Seychellois person could be brought closer to God if only we use kreol in the rituals of the mass and in our prayers. And SBC for good measure replayed the priest putting his words (as a manner of speaking) where his mouth was by substituting our traditional sign of the cross “Au nom du père et du fils et du saint êsprit” into “au nom papa, son garcon ek lesprisen.”
Once upon a time in the Catholic church, mass was said in Latin, at least for high mass. However, the gospel and other readings from the bible were in French. Catechism and the bible were taught in French in the schools, but in English in Anglican schools. In the sixties when liberation theology was the rage, Latin was abandoned in favour of the local language – which in the context of
After the advent of the one party state and the nationalisation of all church owned schools, catechism was abolished from the curriculum. The churches were virtually banned from having any activity or influence in the state owned schools.
Critics claim that Father Alcindor’s proposition will degenerate into the Gospel according to People Plus, the political pamphlet put out by the ruling SPPF in the kreol vernacular, which observes no journalistic ethics or respect for the dignity of the person of their subject matter, especially if he or she is deemed to be Opposition. Others take an intellectually more despondent view of the young priest’s proposition. At a time, they say, when the Christianity is under attack from Islamic extremists with the power of the 24 hour global television, diluting our Christian heritage on the alter of a false sense of nationalism is irresponsible.