The cost of living in Seychelles has become untenable, with families having to make drastic sacrifices in order to be able to feed their families. The President, to maintain favour with his political backers have given very, very high pay increases of between 40 to nearly 80 percent to members of the National Assembly, the Legislative arm of Government, so as to buy their support in keeping him in power.
The country is facing the decline of a nation, as most clinics and hospitals experience a shortage of drugs, our schools are short of teachers, and most stores short of food. The roads are crumbling and at night, these are darkened streetlights remnants of an era three decades ago when Seychelles was one of Africa’s most prosperous nations instead of one of its most troubled.
Our public transportation system is taking its first steps to privatisation. This is not a macro-economic incentive but one of merely passing the buck to the private sector. In following this course of action, President Michel will be averting blame for the hyper-inflation that will soon be the order of the day, as bus fares will follow the haphazard prices of fuel through inflation.
A clear example is that last year he promised to conclude the privatisation of the Seychelles Marketing Board (SMB). The thrust of the privatisation process was to be one where government’s role in the economy will be that of facilitator and not of participator. Look at what has happened. In a complete turn around, these newly formed private companies replacing SMB are part of the government privatisation programme! As part of the programme these companies all have top-level civil servants on the boards. Given the past achievements of these people in the parastatal secto,r we can predict that President Michel is shuflling deck chairs on a rapidly sinking titanic!
Rumours currently abound that soon hit-men in the “tonton macout” days will be making rounds among the population to stamp-out dissent. Should this be true, the only way that Michel will stay in power is through the abuse of power – buying support and muffling dissent. He is further given capacity to do this when visitors to the islands make comments on the perceived good governance in the country. These “savants” receive full coverage on the state-controlled media, no other private organisation is invited to attend or question the findings of these individuals or their representative institutions. It is also important to note that the SBC is still operating under the total control of politicians in the ruling party. This is despite the assurances given over 16 years ago by the SPPF Government that the SBC Act will be reformed. This is a reform that will again reduce the conflict of interest currently shown by SBC.
Highly important to note is that this same issue came out in the Riley Report. More importantly the SNP Leader Wavering Ramkalawan said that his reason for closer links to the SPPF was not his salary increase, but the fact that President Michel was implementing the recommendations of the Riley Report.