The
Week In Review
Democratic
National Convention officially designates Barack Obama as
its Presidential Candidate
*
The fears of a Hilary Clinton uprising prove unfounded.
Barack Obama accepts nomination in historic speech in front
of an unprecedented crowd
--
PARAMANAND SOOBARAH
The
whole jamboree went as choreographed by the campaign
managers and the party bosses. On Day 1, Michelle Obama told
the Convention and America what sort of life the Obama
family led – some in America were relieved to learn that
they were just ordinary, if hardworking, people leading
perfectly simple lives like all other Americans,
particularly those white ones who always keep at a safe
distance from the Black community. Michelle also made clear
she has no political aspirations for herself – all she can
do is act as a conduit for the sufferings of others.
On
Day 2, which was also the 88th anniversary of the
granting of voting rights to women in America, Hilary
Clinton came along and spoke out, proving to America and to
the world that women can aspire to the most powerful
position on the face of this earth. Politically, she also
did what was expected of her. She very forcefully supported
the candidature of Barack Obama, and exhorted all the people
who had voted for her, all eighteen million of them, to vote
for Obama at the forthcoming elections in November. Some
sections of the Press think that her heart was not totally
in it, but then that Press must bear a lot of responsibility
for her defeat in the primaries. All the Party officials and
the Obamas themselves acknowledge that Hilary did all that
she could do and that she needed to do to exit the race
gracefully and help Obama carry on on the Party's way to the
White House.
On
Day 3, Joe Biden, Obama's choice for Vice-President, gave
his acceptance speech. But perhaps more importantly, former
President Bill Clinton came along and gave a rousing speech
in support of Barack Obama; he got the longest applause of
the evening. This was also the night when a roll call vote
in favour of the candidates was scheduled – just to give
Hilary supporters an opportunity to express their pains.
However, when the turn of New York came, Hilary rushed to
the rostrum and emphatically invited the Convention to agree
the nomination of Barack Obama by acclamation and the crowd
cheered. Then Representative Nancy Pelosi, who is also the
speaker of the House of Representatives, came forward and
declared Barack Obama to be the official nominee of the
Democratic Party. Job done.
Barack
Obama's speech comes on Day 4; details next week. But the
one very important point about Day 4 is that it comes on the
45th anniversary of Dr Martin Luther King's
"I have a dream" speech. “I have a dream!”
he had said, “I have a dream that one day this nation will
rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: we hold
these truths to be self-evident -- that all men are created
equal!… I have a dream that my four children will one day
be judged not by the colour of their skin but by the content
of their character! I have a dream.”
On
that day few believed that such a dream could ever come
true. But stemming directly from his efforts his dream has
arrived. A fellow African American (then they were all
referred to by the N-word) is today the officially
designated candidate of one of the two main parties in
America for the most powerful position in the country, and
indeed in the whole world.
*
* *
The
Middle East
Al Maliki to George W. Bush: Get out of Iraq!
Amidst
all the noise and bustle of the Conventions, America and the
Middle East are poised to hear the recommendations of
General Petraeus on troop withdrawal from Iraq. These troops
are badly needed in Afghanistan. But Prime Minister Al
Maliki has cut the grass from under his feet by requesting
America to pull troops out even faster than what
Presidential Candidate Barack Obama wants them to. The Anbar
province, formerly a stronghold of Saddam loyalists and
Sunni insurgents, is being turned over to the Iraqi
government. The Sunni forces have organised themselves into
a movement called The Awakening; the Shia are most unhappy
about this. All now want the Americans to leave. The reason
is, I imagine, that they want to start the real tripartite
Sunni-Shia-Kurdish battle. That, if it comes about, will be
the worst bloodbath seen in the world since the Partition of
India and Pakistan.
Elsewhere
in the Middle East, Condoleeza Rice has called the continued
settlement activity of Israelis "unhelpful". That
is the strongest condemnation that America has been able to
pronounce about the theft of territory and the attendant
expulsion of residents perpetrated by Israel. It is hard to
think of anything more shameful than this.
*
* *
The
Caucasus
Enough is enough, says Russia
What
is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. What is OK
for Kosovo is OK for South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The Russian
parliament passed a unanimous resolution asking President
Medyedev to recognise the independence of those two hitherto
Georgian provinces. The President has willingly obliged.
The
"West" is engaging in very aggressive rhetoric.
Somehow British Foreign Minister David Miliband seems to
have adopted wholesale the language of Georgian President
Saakashvili. The "G7" have threatened sanctions.
Basically, their message is: "We have money. We will
make it expensive for you." Russia remains unperturbed.
Prime Minister Putin has pointed out the hypocrisy of the
American and charges that country roundly with having
encouraged Saakashvili in his childish behaviour. I am sure
the Russian population will prefer to eat grass as in the
Tsarist days than kneel to the West for their good opinion
in opposition to their own interests.
Those
who listen to the BBC will have seen how the terminology of
the Cold War is back. I doubt that the world will divide
itself into an anti-Russia and a pro-Russia camp in the wake
of the Georgia incident, but were it do so, I am convinced
that Russia is prepared to go it alone. If the worst comes
to the worst, it will find a friend on the other side of the
Caucasus in Iran.
*
* *
South
Asia
In India, the turmoil is aggravated by Acts of God
In
India, the acts of terrorism pale in front of the suffering
caused by the floods in Bihar State, where the rains and
melting snow from the Himalayas have changed a river's
course and inundated areas never having suffered from
flooding before. Two million people are affected. The State
government did what it could when the flooding started, and
now the Central Government has also moved in with the
military. Better late than never. But the task facing the
rescuers surpasses by far the resources at their disposal.
Floods
and droughts are phenomena that will increase in frequency
and intensity. It is essential for the task of finding
solutions to them be taken out of the political arena. An
all-party task force under the chairmanship of a person like
former President Abdul Kalam should be established and its
recommendations agreed by all parties as a national plan.
Local objections to its implementation should be fought down
with the help of the military and the rabble-rousers kept
under lock and key for as long as required.
Beyond
this Act of God, some men of God are also causing trouble. A
group of Christian terrorists have shot and killed four
Hindu religious persons, one of them a Swami. At the bottom
of this is the conversion work being carried very actively
the Christians. In my humble opinion proselytisation is a
form of aggression, and ought to be banned. Mr Nehru, sadly,
did not think so. Access to tribal areas in India is banned
to Indians, but wide open to those who will convert the
people.
Retaliatory
attacks have taken place. His Holiness the Pope has rightly
condemned the killings, both of the Hindus and the
Christians. But the media, with the BBC in the lead, only
report that the Pope has deplored the killing of Christians.
There must have been a change of management at the BBC, for
its language, particularly in its headlines, is reverting to
what it was in the fifties and the sixties – anti-India,
anti-Russia.
*
* *
Pakistan
slipping further into anarchy
In
Pakistan, the coalition between the PPP and the PML-N has
broken down. While they agreed to get rid of President
Musharraf, they could not agree about the rest. The
principal bone of contention is the reinstatement of deposed
Chief Justice Iftikar Mohammed. Mr Ten Percent fears that
the CJ will take action against him. He has a better idea.
He will run for president himself – with the same
executive powers that President Musharraf had, of dissolving
the Government and Parliament at will.
During
the elections all parties had agreed that the President's
powers must be curtailed, and that real power must be held
by the Prime Minister. This would have brought the Army and
the ISI under political control. Very sadly, now that the
elections are over and President Musharraf is out of the
way, Asif Ali Zardari has forgotten those promises.
In
the meantime dozens of people are being bombed to their
deaths every single day by the Taliban and Al Qaeda. And
there are others, particularly in the media, who are trying
to rally Pakistanis around the one subject that never fails
to achieve that objective, namely hostility towards the
hated Indians. The current campaign's theme is that all the
bombing and the political squabbling are being secretly
orchestrated by India. Look out for another war.
*
* *
National
Matters
How corrupt are we as a nation?
Corruption
was not invented in Mauritius, still less so by the
Mauritius Labour Party, or, to be more precise, by Indo-Mauritians.
This is an impression innocent or naive observers may easily
walk away with from a cursory glance at our mainstream daily
and weekend press. Ostensibly, what that press seeks to do
is enlighten its intelligent readership, particularly that
part of it which is in western foreign embassies, about what
goes on in this typical third world county. But the people
in those embassies know better. If there is one country that
makes a frontal attack on corruption, or other forms of
white-collar crime, wherever it occurs, it is the United
States of America. America is not only about George W. Bush
and Dick Cheney – these are just ephemeral phenomena in
that great country.
Any
democracy can occasionally be just like something I prefer
not to mention, but an important characteristic of which is
that the biggest and dirtiest chunks float to the top. But
as a rule, it is the least worst form of government.
Mauritians must develop a greater awareness of what goes on
in America, and also in Europe, on matters of white collar
crime: no matter how important an official, if he
misbehaves, he can be dragged into police custody in
handcuffs in the full glare of the media.
I
am not an expert in corruption, not in the theory of it, nor
indeed in the practice of it. But I have seen how very
honest people, absolutely correct in their early years, turn
into the most corrupt fellows later on in life. Corruption
is very corrosive; living side by side with people who make
loads of money just by saying a word here and there, is a
great temptation. My own good fortune has spared me such
soul-destroying company: For forty-five years have I
laboured in the government service and in international
organisations, but never have I had a close colleague, above
me or below me, to my right or to my left, who was
interested in making money by unfair means, or who did not
think it absolutely evil to engage in such conduct. Some say
that some of the people I worked with in a ministry that I
worked for at the beginning of my appointment as a head of a
government department turned out to be corrupt in later
life. That may well be so – or maybe not; I am not in a
position to agree or disagree. But I can say with the most
absolute confidence that no member of that ministry ever
raised a subject that involved the least shadow of
corruption with me.
However,
having read and studied Marcel Pagnol's Topaze,
I can understand how people who start out in life with the
best of intentions and resolutions, turn into the most venal
bribe or commission extortionists. Those who read the book
ought to also read the guidance that should go with it;
misinterpretation of what is essentially a satire can have
exactly the opposite consequences to those intended. The
money that one can get by honest employment, say as a
teacher, when compared to the torrential flood that one can
get in business or politics bears the same sort of
comparison as the Grand Bassin does to the wide Pacific
Ocean. People who want advantages they are not entitled to
are prepared to pay huge sums for them to those with the
power to grant or facilitate those favours. However, those
who take money for such favours also, at the same time, sell
a little piece of the national interest. In very serious
cases it can also amount to treason.
There
is also another form of corruption that perhaps does not
affect the national interest to the same extent, except for
the reputation of the nation which does take a severe blow.
That is what is called 'speed' money in India. When the
Civil Service is poorly organised and poorly supervised,
those who have to do small jobs (like signing off replies to
letters) have so much work to do that they only attend to
items where they receive some form of additional
compensation. When this is done just to expedite a case but
without affecting the nature of the approval involved in the
case, the payment will qualify as speed money. If the nature
of the approval is changed because of the money received, it
becomes just another case of vulgar and reprehensible
bribery.
I
am not aware to what extent bribery is prevalent in
Mauritius, never having paid or received any form of it. But
as an observer of the national scene, I can see how bribery
is built into our democracy. Many promises made around
election time will qualify as bribery. It is one thing to
promise to redress an injustice, and a totally different one
to offer to do something just to get the vote of some group
or other. Corruption colours the actions of some governments
in power as well. There are things that should be done on
ethical grounds but are not done on political grounds, and
things that should never be done on ethical grounds but the
government of the day takes a deep breath and plunges in to
do, again on political grounds. This is called "realpolitik".
I
recall, for instance, that one officer had been declared
corrupt by a judge, and the opposition of the day had
severely criticised the government for the lenient treatment
extended to the officer. When, after the ensuing elections
Government and Opposition changed roles, the officer
concerned was rewarded with other lucrative appointments.
Apparently the officer concerned has a large following in
the electorate. This is the sort of thing that leads me to
say that corruption is ingrained in our system.
The
sort of behaviour I have outlined takes place not just in
politics and the Civil Service. Very little gets done in
business without the payment of "commissions",
which to me is another form of corruption. Those people in
business who are so bitter in their criticisms of the Civil
Service for the corruption of its employees should stop and
consider how much of the money they receive as commissions
ought more properly to go to their companies.
This
short review of corruption in the country would not be
complete with a quick look at the institution which is most
vocal in exposing corruption, namely the Media. I do not
know if journalists take money for writing articles (even
though cases are not unknown), but it is obvious that they
are quite capable of manipulating information to advance
causes they support or block off or delay those they are
opposed to. In many cases the managements of the paper can
be quite innocent of the dark intentions of their
contributors, but the press does not just mean the
intentions of the press managements, but includes everything
that gets printed. The way the recent Cunningham case was
handled by the Media shows that there was more in it than
just protecting the interests of Mr Cunningham. A political
cause was being advanced.
PARAMANAND
SOOBARAH
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