According to Mrs Ginette Gamatis, the doyen and oldest member of the National Assembly under the
Mrs Gamatis was a teacher by profession, starting her career in the early seventies, well before the coup d’etat. So she obviously knows the difference between suffering and difficulty. Just what she meant by suffering Mrs Gamatis has yet to give details. But the difficulties are very obvious.
Although she came from a poor family from Port Glaud, her parents must have been very stoic about their suffering. They managed to nurture their children to personal successes and great achievements. Mrs Gamatis must have been sufficiently proficient to become a qualified teacher despite what she wants us to believe were great odds. Her brother too made it to the
Mrs Gamatis has a habit of exaggerating the sufferings of the people before the coup d’etat and minimising the difficulties faced by today’s generation after 30 years of being ruled by the SPPF, as a loyal agent of the party. She also knows that before the coup d’etat there were indeed occasions of shortages of onions in the shops. But that was not due to our country not being able to afford the money required to import the onions, just as we did not have difficulties to pay foreign suppliers for the fuel needed to run our cars or generating electricity. Shortages occurred before the coup d’etat only because the cargo vessel bringing the onions broke down. Before the coup d’etat we could afford to import onions simply by delivering local currency to the banks. Indeed, the banks used to give loans to merchants in local currency to import onions and other goods.
Today, the shortage of onions exists despite the large amount of money (rupees) in the commercial banks. SMB, the only importer since anybody, especially the young generation can remember, earns sufficient money in rupees to recover the cost of importing the onions. So does SEPEC, the only importer of fuel that the present generation can remember. The difficulties of today are that the currency we use – which the tourists are not allowed to use, is no longer viable. They cannot be converted into foreign exchange to pay the overseas suppliers, even though our Central Bank religiously tell us how much it is worth in the various international currencies.
Experience has it that, all sufferings cause difficulties but not all difficulties necessarily cause suffering. But the difficulties of our country today are causing many sufferings, especially for the very young members of the many one-parent families Mrs Gamatis have helped to get a government flat. Mrs Gamatis knows this to be true and it was apparent in her intervention during the state of the nation debate that she finds it very hard to defend the record of her party in the light of the many difficulties that are causing countless sufferings.