(Part 1)
Lepep Seselwa, bonswar! I come before you today to present to you my manifesto on how I plan to change the course and destiny of our country – ‘Nou pti pei Sesel’. Following 34 years (1977-2011) of SPPF mismanagement, we as a people have been robbed of our basic rights as citizens. With their popularity in the doldrums, the JJ gravy train has turned to creating new citizens in their desperate hope of clinging to power. Our economy is in tatters and they are appealing to the cash rich Arabs, Russians, Indians and South Africans to pull them out of the financial waste pit! They use to confiscate land on the pretext of redistributing to the people. Today, Seychelles is for sale… for one rupee, on the promise that the investors bring in loads of dollars & Euros to pull us out of this bottomless hole - managed by SPPF communists who do not have a clue how much a kilo of tomatoes costs today for you Dear fellow Seychellois…the rupee is in free fall and the forex is being siphoned off right before our eyes as the grandiose schemes of mega business, billion dollar island projects line the already bursting pockets…
Our People have had enough! We need to take back our country before the SPPF sells whatever is left and runs away with all the forex, leaving us out there in the cold, to go back to ‘ramas koko’ and be employed as ‘boy’ to the Sheiks, Oligarchs, Maharajahs and Chiefs!
As your next, presidential candidate with the specific mission of taking back our country, here is my pledge to you my good fellow Seselwa people of The Seychelles Islands - Another world of multiple possibilities for the generation that saw the dawn of our new nation, endured coup d’etat, abuse, exile, torture, assassinations, indoctrination, repression, one party dictatorship… Let us rid ourselves of this fading legacy of experimentation in Marxism / Communism gone seriously and scarily wrong! The time bomb has been thrown into our lap and it is ticking fast!
• Giving the Seychellois back their dignity – We will evaluate all the key posts in government and parastatals to replace all expatriates by our own qualified staff especially those who have been harshly made redundant recently. Unnecessary expatriate labor is a huge drain on our forex situation. We are too heavily dependent on foreign labour. We will implement a program to bring back Seychellois who have left our Country because they were wise to France Albert Rene’s madness early. We need these Seychellois today, so the money they earn will stay in Seychelles and will be used to improve our heritage and not enslave us as SPPF’s failed Programme of Strategy 2017 guarantees.
• Seychellois affirmative action (empowerment) – ‘Sesel Pou Seselwa’ - This famous motto of Albert Rene will be put into action! Real Seselwa (those who lived through all the three republics (either locally or in exile!) i.e. free independent Seychelles of 76, one party state from 77 onwards and multi party 93 days. Those who are eligible ‘real’ Seselwa should be those who have been born and lived under these past regimes! Today we are selling our shirt off our backs in a desperate attempt to maintain a corrupt system afloat.
• No more shortage of goods! - How difficult is it to feed 80,000 people? SPPF cannot maintain a regular supply of baby food, potatoes, milk, onions, rice, in spite of controlling all our hard earned money and fleecing us of all our little extra money through excessive taxes.
• Eliminate nepotism – Under my Government, dismiss all the underhanded deals that have benefited a chosen few. Our heritage needs to be revalued and the proceeds of any deals have to be for the people to enjoy. A lean government means less parasites living off the resources of the People of Seychelles. The sharing and caring exercise has been conducted successfully and now we are playing on the ‘stability’ theme –‘Pou Lanmour Sesel’ in case someone from inside the camp decides to rock the boat! We say, “Enough to the stranglehold that the SPPF octopus has over our heads”. The privatization process is almost complete and Tom, Dick and Francis have left the building and are sitting on a cloud in the new Seychelles… the Seychelles Way!
Despite being the best rally fiesta organizers, the party is over!
• Crack down on corruption – New laws to prosecute those embezzling funds, investigate all bogus companies that are operating in SEZ, officials to declare all their assets, People of Seychelles, there is enough money that has been embezzled in this Country to run our Country for at least 10 years. We must get it all back. No negotiations on this issue except this point to the concerned citizens: Give it all back and nothing less! The People’s money does not belong in your overseas accounts, and you do not need more then one villa to sleep at night.
• Better protection for our citizens – Empower the Police & build more police stations, better equipment, scale down on the army, revamp the coast guards to better police our territorial waters…My Government will make the Police Force a professional Force. With immediate effect, I will increase salaries by 50%. We will obtain the funds for this from a reduced size Army. If the Army soldiers want to be proud and serve our Country in the Police Force, they will have to be trained to use Police techniques with our civilians. We are not at war today. We have no enemy. Let no Seychellois say he is proud because he walks with an AK-47 strapped to his shoulder to shoot a fellow Seychellois. This is cowardice of the first degree. Army soldiers today, I say this to you, open your eyes, and do not let SPPF use you: get on with a better life, our country offers numerous opportunities that our government has preferred handing out to foreigners for a few petrodollars! This is what taking back our country is all about! We need to be the ones welcoming tourists to visit our beautiful country and not guarding the perimeters of our land and our beaches, while foreign companies exploit it for their own personal benefit (remember 100% forex retention!).
• Overhaul the poor state of our health services – The government has amassed loads of taxes over the years in a ‘Robin Hood’ social security system and yet today, we have a system that is collapsing in the wake of Albert Rene’s reign, while he ventures with his Ramadoss buddy into ‘Private Health Care’. And it seems to come with its ‘tourism related’ business venture as well…Politicians know little about hospital services. Doctors and Accountants and Nurses should run hospitals.
Politicians should stick to politics and Doctors should stick to Medicine; when you confuse the two you get the equivalent of animal feed mixed with hotel food. Makes good pig food! And then to confuse us even further, it is all wrapped up and served to us in the ‘People’s Supermarket’ !!
The funds are there and have been amassed over the years; we need to retrieve this jackpot and reinvest it back to where it belongs – to the benefit of the Seychellois people…and not let another Minister take the self-eject chair of this most important ministry. We should eliminate all vices and bad habits that have a drain on the health of a nation. We need strong and capable men & women and note inebriated, aimless, depressed citizens who see no future ahead of them for the families…
• Freedom and respect of our constitutional rights – How do you expect a party who has betrayed the country’s first constitution to be able to enforce rights that they have been violating for all their lifetime!
Taking back our country is the noble task of tearing down the SPPF wall of lies, aided and abetted by a publicly-funded, government-controlled media. The beast is kept in place by a fear of the enemy paranoia, supported by thugs ‘a la ton ton macoute’, Haitian mafia style!
We need to lay down the foundations to protect the rights and freedom of our people – a new found democracy for the people & by the people. When a People do not have their basic rights protected and respected, we become like animals in the eyes of our oppressor. These fundamental rights will allow us to develop into a more civilized people who are taught to fend for themselves (and not depend on handouts from the yes men politicians), who vow to rid our society of the social ills & finally be what they want to be … no longer a ‘prawn’ for the SPPF octopus…
• Spearhead Seychellois entrepreneurship - Our Seychellois First Policy will be the center of our development. Even rastas should have the same opportunity to own parts of an island just like Francis Savy, for One Rupee. Seychellois Companies are best positioned to know what their labor needs are, not Department of Immigration. Seychellois businesses should be allowed to import and export as they wish. Sea cucumbers should be exported liberally. We need our own purse seiners, our own shipping lines to reduce the cost of cargo to Seychelles; we need to encourage more marine activities spearheaded by our own people. Our sea is vast. So is our potential. Get rid of SPPF and we open up the door of opportunity for all Seychellois. No more islands as playgrounds for the chosen few!
• The Singapore Model? – ‘Onward to Socialism’ was selling us a dream and it was supposed to be based on the Singapore model (so we were led to believe!). We now all know that Albert Rene is no Lee Quan Yew! He betrayed the nation, indebted the state, gave some houses to the poor, maintaining an iron fist approach to anything that would stand in his way. Personal and crony enrichment missions having been more or less accomplished in 93, they invite the rest of us to battle it out for a piece of the cake…but to our horror we are now left with crumbs as they have ran away with the whole three tier wedding cake that the British left us in 76! - (Albert Rene was Prime Minister with the land development portfolio at that time!).
Today Singapore is a beacon for the world in leading fields such as science & tech, medicine, efficient government, finance and commerce etc… Seychelles has regressed dramatically in all of the above. The Albert Rene Empire (first family, second family, other ‘baskour’ eligible) of money machines, ‘televizyon par grap’, hotels deals, flats, islands, super markets, printing presses, more casinos, hospital complex, Aussie farm, ‘Larzan Mersener’, ‘Larzan Malo’, newly orchestrated privatization a la Jj (75% for the boss and the rest we share).
There is a vast amount of Seychellois brain power both within and in several corners of the world. The very same gray matter that Albert Rene has tried to eliminate has now germinated and growing into a strong and healthy plant. Unfortunately, it is now impossible to uproot it or spray it with pesticide! Bring back the melting pot that makes the authentic Seselwa! Bring back the brains to run the country, bring back our “joie de vivre”. Together we can be a force to rid ourselves of this octopus-like grip that the Albert Rene, fat cats & SPPF cronies have set on our country. We have the power to change things around for a better Seychelles. Let’s take back our country from this grip before we are crushed to death. The ‘Sesel Pou Selselwa’ movement is on the march to rid our country of these kleptomaniacs!
• Revamp our educational institutions – After numerous failed attempts at ‘experimentation’ with a proudly functioning education system based on meritocracy, the zoning & NYS completely turned the education of a population on its head. We took a leaf out of Cuban Communism and mixed it with a bit of ‘Onward to Socialism’. Indoctrination was the order of the day and little ‘princes’ started building their empires… A Seychellois well educated has the world as his oyster. Without proper education of our People, we let SPPF win, and they get a full line of street cleaners, lapire sippers, and chamber maids, fish cleaners. That is all they envision for us. It is why, my dear People, why so many for so many years, have departed from these beautiful shores to live a half-hearted life in a foreign land, longing to one day, come home again, without a bunch of communists telling them their children need to talk less, learn less, speak less…to fit into the New Seychelles today!
• Democracy for the people by the people – We will turn the district admin facilities into proper forums for the people where they can express themselves through debate. This should be an easy exercise to do. Switzerland> has a very functional model that we can emulate.
The country’s media needs to be an open forum for a representative cross-section of the population who can openly air their views on anything that are of concern to our community and our country’s well being. Debates on national issues need to be encouraged for wider ‘democratic’ consultations & sharing of ideas for the betterment of the whole country. Government by consultation, consensus & collective decision making is what we aspire to emulate for the future of Seychelles.
An election is based on what one can achieve during his mandate and not to ‘protect’ what we have. We need to find ways of getting more for our children; those who want to protect what they have gained (mostly in an ill-gotten fashion) are selfish and do not want their people to look forward to a brighter future (tomorrow) without them…
But don’t forget that the people have a right to claim back what rightfully belongs to them.
• SPPF should admit failure - and stop trying desperately to cling on to power. Lies, lies & more lies! They are all a bunch of losers who are trying to follow in the wake of their ‘Don,’ clutching their handsome payoffs via a network of shady deals under the cover of ‘Pou Lanmour Sesel’ … après moi le deluge…14 years of trying to legitimize a capital sin has now run its course. Our country needs a breath of fresh air and our citizens need to claim back a good part of his legitimate motherland which has been auctioned off to those able to flash dollar & Euro bills. Or is 1 rupee more or less the asking price…
• Trade with our neighboring countries – Seychelles has, from its earlier days, been blessed by having a very strategic location at the heart of the Indian Ocean. Better solidarity with our neighbors and trade agreements need to be forged in an effort to bring the costs of most imported items down. Gone are the days when we had to rely on SMB to deliver whatever tickled their fancy! We have fisheries resources, while our neighbours have the perfect counter-trade commodity – the fruits of the land! How difficult is it to feed 80,000 people?
• Sesel Pou Seselwa? = Do not forget People of Seychelles …do not forget. The Arab can go back to Arabia. The South African can go back to Cape Town. The Chinese can go back to China or Taiwan>, Yankee can go home! But where will you, my People, go back to after SPPF is done with selling our dear heritage Seychelles to pay their debts? The country is bankrupt and we need to take it back… before we head for the clouds and the big blue divide……
To be continued… periodically until the next elections are called! Various additional themes and ideas on how to take back our country from the grip of this multi-headed, multi-business Empire, SPPF octopus will be explored. Until such time that we can cut loose from the tentacles…