Michel’s  trip to France

Was the Debt Arrears mentioned?

President James Michel sounds satisfied with his brief visit to France, his first  to meet the new French President , Nicholas Sarkozy.

As The Nation points out, he had met Jacques Chirac, the predecessor of Mr. Sarkozy. So besides the bilateral relations and the subjects of common interest, what else did the talks focus on?

It has been many years since Seychelles has not had any meaningful assistance from France. Not even  ambassador Michel Tretout, who does not hide his true political colours,  can change that.

  The main reason being that Seychelles owes over 30 million euros to the French Development Agency, France’s main lending organisation to third world countries.  It has taken several years to build up that total, but repayments have been nil and millions are in arrears.

Recently, after issuing the $200 million of junk bonds and later another $30 million to repay unpaid loans, the African Development Bank ( ADB) and the Tokyo and Mitsubishi Bank were mentioned,  but not the French agency. And Sarkozy is less likely to bend the rules and aid bad debtors than Chirac, who was more inclined to be cosy to African dictators, including Robert Mugabe, often just to spite the British and US..

During such a short visit, Michel also worked tirelessly  to confer with potential businessmen who are interested in tourism or so the State House spin machine claims.

The French have probably not forgotten nor forgiven  what befell their kinfolk here during the One-Party State era, when several had their properties arbitrarily seized. Their fellow Germans, Italians and Swiss counterparts met with the same cruel fate.

That explains why so many concessions have  to  be given to woo South Africans, Mauritians and  Maldivians  to virtually run our tourism industry these days.