Figuring Out The Wheel ThingFiguring out the Wheel in the old days, before cars, electricity, carriages, and fork lifts existed, even before we had religion and political parties, way back then, when a few cavemen sat around a square stone and looked at it, beating their heads, thumping their chests, they were all faced with one challenge which would shape the future of all of mankind for thousands of years to come after them: how to make that square stone roll.
They all had their different ideas, one red-faced caveman said leave it square. It is my decision and I will not change it. Finale! “Kaptenn pa sanz direksyon”, yelled the red faced caveman!
Then the green-faced caveman, he ate only leaves, hence why he was always green and falling down regularly, said the wheel is square and if we just push it a little harder it will move. Then we can call it a man-powered wheel and everyone will accept it, as long as we do not allow anyone to say otherwise. We can conspire to keep horses from pulling our square wheel and we will get the credit for the idea through out history.
The blue caveman stood up, stretched his lower back yawned as he looked into the deep blue sky where he believed he had obtained his power to live, and then looked at his fellow cavemen and said, my fellow cavemen, a square stone will not roll. It must be rounded to roll like the full moon up in the sky. Look he insisted! Slowly, they looked one by one and in unison and amazement; they finally all agreed to try rounding the stone.
However, human nature being what it is did not stop them from calling the blue-faced caveman arrogant, know it all, and threatened to kill him with a bludgeoned object because he spoke too much and said too much. They even threatened to tie a huge rock with vines around his neck and throw him in the nearby sea. As he ran for cover, the blue-faced caveman said, “what you do not see in a thousand years, you will see in one day”. May the Great One in the Blue Sky have Mercy on you all, he proclaimed as he ran off to save himself!
And so... this is how the square stone became a rounded wheel, the humble beginnings of Toyota, Mercedes and BMW. Thanks God for the Blues! There is still hope!
In Seychelles we are saying the wheel is square, today. Like these cavemen debated the issues before them concerning the square stone and the challenge to make a wheel, we, today in Seychelles, battle with what to do about our failing economy and failing currency and the painful burden on our people that it all brings.
The problem is not new. Seychellois must understand this problem has been with us for over 25 years now. The SPPF have been in DENIAL for that long. We have been tricked for the same number of years. They have recently in past Elections embarked on a campaign of BAT LATET to fool and mislead the People of Seychelles into believing everything was fine and great prosperity was at hand very soon.
When we had undergone shortages of food-stuff like onions, garlic, rice, lentils, they would tell us a boat was stranded in Dar-Es-Salaam. Most recently, the JJ Spirit has lied to us about the State of our economy and debts, saying that we had paid all external debts; only now to learn we still have many debts.
Furthermore, debt servicing siphons off much of all the foreign exchange we earn. Most recently, they have told us to “curb consumption”, take the bus, and plant some papaya seeds to get your 5 portions of fruit per day. This was not the picture they painted for us before Elections. They build tankers we never see, while we need cargo ships to reduce the cost of our sea transshipments to Seychelles.
Since the SPPF do not know what to do, they have opted other players into the picture to help shoulder the blame of the difficult times ahead.
Many do not understand what we face or the magnitude of the problem when we talk about our National Finances. Remember well, before the Central Bank “readjusted rates” of the Seychelles Rupee to the US Dollar, we had a second visit from Dr. Fitzgerald, Former Prime Minister of
The Doctor looked at our situation from a text book and gave SPPF a text book solution. Cheap answer sort of, to pay for the trip and get back home. What did the Doctor not know? He did not know that from September through to the third week of December, is our lowest Tourism Season and in the Southwest which extended through October, there was hardly any fish to sell to the world to allow foreign exchange into our banking system. That is one reason why by December we will not know much more then what we knew in September.
One paper whose writer had no idea what she was writing about said that Devaluation is failing us. She gave the reader the impression that Devaluation was done and it is now over with. We should now start to see the benefits of the move. This assertion is a complete misunderstanding of what we are faced with today in
Devaluation is not a single act of readjustment. It is many instances of it that can take years.
The Devaluation process is a process that can take years. The worse the economic structural imbalances are for a country, the worse it will be for the people and the longer it will take to achieve financial equilibrium and restore the Seychelles financial system back to where it was before France Albert Rene took the Country in a Coup d’Etat on June 5th, 1977.
Because the failure is so deep and the imbalances are so extensive, do not expect it to be solved over night or in one Election mandate. Many who see this have taken steps to leave
Economic migration today is the single largest reason why Seychellois are leaving their beloved Country for good. No one is waiting for mega project developers to have a heart and bank some of that hard currency in our banking system. Ralph Agrippine telling all of
More loans to the SPPF Government will not help resolve the problem we face. That idea is like the square wheel thing. Loans have to be serviced...that means paid back. You need foreign exchange for that. We are already rated B- on our performance rating, which means the international financial houses already know we do not pay on time and soon we will earn CCC rating, which means we are likely to default on our external obligations. More loans managed by SPPF will just dig a bigger hole for
As we unravel this mess, never forget those wise words coming from food store owner, Mr. R. Weber: “money does not come into our banking system because it has no credibility”.
Now we know why there is no money in the system. Let us all commit to work backwards now like prawns, and figure out why there is no credibility in the system. Then we will know what to do and we can start walking forward as Chrom-magnum did a few thousand years ago... with his round wheel of course to lighten the daily load.
In the meantime, Mr. President has imported 35 pigs from Spain to reduce the rise in cost of living for us by 2008. Rice, don’t forget the rice, please...you promised 8 days but you brought in only 8 bags! That can qualify as a new listing under JJ lies...careful now... the list is growing, we are checking it twice.