Perks, Power, and Silence: The High Cost of Public Office

Opinion

By Jan Arden

On Monday last, a radio station hosted invigorating exchanges around the expenditures and salary packages, including such fringe benefits as travel/per diem, the nation incurs for our top political appointees and administrative brass at major state-owned corporations and our numerous parastatal organisations. Independently of what was promised in manifestos, not that they are irrelevant, there is no doubt that this is a conversation that needs to take place in all politburos when the nation is being prepared for tough times to come to sort out the mess left behind by the outgoing administration.

“Our elite civil servants vie for board appointments to top-tier state-owned enterprises such as Air Mauritius (or its Holdings),
Mauritius Telecom, or the State Bank where government certainly needs to have a watch. It is often said that when a Director-General is experienced and assertive, the board may become more of a formal presence, occasionally deferring to ministerial direction.
If so, it raises a legitimate question: how effective were they in anticipating or preventing the troubling practices now under investigation by the Financial Crimes Commission? Did they exercise their duty of oversight and speak up when necessary — or remain silent in the face of questionable decisions and ethical lapses?”

Some of the terms and conditions granted to previous grandees must have been so outrageous that neither MPs nor the public were allowed access to them. Claims of state secrecy or confidentiality clauses with commercial or private entities conveniently shielded figures such as the former Director-General of ICAC, the Speaker of the National Assembly, the ubiquitous accountants, a cohort of advisors, and the recipients of mind-boggling fees handed out left, right, and centre to legal men perceived to be MSM loyalists. On the transparency front, the public expects this government to do much better — even if the bar had previously been set so low.

Of course, there is merit to the catchy phrase I first heard fifty years ago in Singapore: “Pay peanuts, get monkeys.” In our context, how can we attract the country’s best brains to take the plunge and endure the pressures of political life — pressures that will inevitably affect their private, family, and professional lives for years to come? Moreover, the combined number of MPs, Ministers, and their advisors barely exceeds a hundred. Their salary packages would not place any significant strain on the national budget. They can certainly be justified if they are doing their jobs properly, but world tours with commensurate per diems, as entertained for instance, by the jolly crowd that bustled to the Dubai Expo at our expenses, should be reined in. So should the various allowances they voted for themselves at various times in the past be rationalized.

Do we really need to continue purchasing and maintaining a fleet of expensive ministerial vehicles — many of which end up in repairs at the Line Barracks — when Ministers and senior officials already benefit from 100% duty-free privileges every four years or so? Government has no business running (poorly?) a limousine garage. It should also have no compulsion in limiting engine capacities on our road and weather conditions for all duty-free cars. Our elites can certainly afford the extras they desire; those who wish to drive luxury brands like Porsche, Aston Martin, or Jaguar can pay the difference themselves, using their generous duty-free allowances.

While MPs and Ministers are but a handful, it was once estimated that we have around 400 parastatal bodies and state-owned entities, some of duplicate value and others of marginal interest, yet each comes with its own costly overheads — Chairpersons, Boards or Councils, and Director-Generals included. Do we need a sabre-rattling Elon Musk to go through that list and streamline it?

Our elite civil servants vie for board appointments to top-tier state-owned enterprises such as Air Mauritius (or its Holdings), Mauritius Telecom, or the State Bank where government certainly needs to have a watch. It is often said that when a Director-General is experienced and assertive, the board may become more of a formal presence, occasionally deferring to ministerial direction. If so, it raises a legitimate question: how effective were they in anticipating or preventing the troubling practices now under investigation by the Financial Crimes Commission? Did they exercise their duty of oversight and speak up when necessary — or remain silent in the face of questionable decisions and ethical lapses?

Indeed, these — and many other — questions deserve to be part of a broader conversation our leaders must engage in, even if only for the symbolic value of such reflection in a time of looming austerity.

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Weapons, Propaganda, and Power: The Global Stakes in the Indo-Pak Conflict

The recent tragic conflict — part of a long series of terrorist attacks originating from Pakistan — has been watched closely by virtually all major world capitals. For some, it’s a matter of military strategy; for others, it’s a chance to observe, in real battlefield conditions, how the weapons and defence systems they’ve sold to the two belligerents have performed. This interest is hardly surprising, given that such raw, unfiltered feedback can significantly influence ongoing or future arms deals — positively or negatively. In this context, information, disinformation, and propaganda wars have come to dominate international conflicts — and this one was no exception.

China, for instance, supplies around 80% of Pakistan’s military hardware, including the JF series of fighter jets (such as the JF-17 and the more advanced JF-10), alongside older U.S.-made F-16s. It also provides virtually the entire air defiance infrastructure — integrated missile systems and radar networks — tasked with protecting high-value civilian areas in Punjab and key military installations along the Indian border. Beyond military ties, China shares deeper strategic interests with Pakistan as its principal financial backer, notably through the multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which runs through Balochistan and passes perilously close to conflict zones in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Additionally, Beijing may view with concern the recent trend of major multinational corporations relocating operations to India — and possibly making it not entirely indifferent to instability in its southern neighbour.

India has chosen the 4.5G fleet of Dassault Rafales to replace its ageing fleet of MIG 21 and 29s, pending its autonomous Tejas Mark II and other indigenous aircraft. The Indian military is reportedly so satisfied with the Rafale’s performance that Prime Minister Modi fast-tracked the acquisition of 29 additional units of its marine version. Though the fighter jet is high-performance and battle-tested, France will no doubt follow closely any involvement of the Rafale in air combats or missions. Commercial contracts and perspectives loom large in the conflict’s background even when the US/President Trump is keen on pushing the untested and costly F22 or 35s stealth fighter jets onto PM Modi.

The USA and the western powers will be closely evaluating and assessing strengths and weaknesses in China’s military technologies, defensive and offensive, as yet largely untested under real-life combat and conflict situation. Moscow has not only the MIGs and Sukhoi fighter jets in India’s armoury, but India purchased in 2016 (before US sanctions were in place) the highly rated S-400 missile defense systems and radars, overriding US rumblings, as it was quite simply reputed to be the best in its class. Capable of using a panoply of missiles (SAM 400km cruise missiles, deadly Israeli Barak-8, French SCALP and HAMMER missiles to 75km, and the Indian developed Akash for the 30 km range), its mobility on sturdy Tata trucks and its radar-based ability to detect, lock on and fire at multiple threats simultaneously, it provided a multi-layered fully computerised missile defense system which was about to be tested in war-like conditions.

The system software (Akashveer) to integrate the various components was apparently fully indigenous, developed by Indian scientists and engineers. The ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) on its side had developed a fully indigenous array of precision surveillance satellites making reliance on US Intel and technology a thing of the past. In terms of offensive capabilities, the fully indigenous « loitering » drones as opposed to Turkey-supplied Pakistani drones were of great interest.

However, it was the deadly fast and accurate Indo-Russian BrahMos missile — recently exported to Manila, with several other countries lined up for potential deals — that was undoubtedly under intense scrutiny. Would this “star of the show” deliver on its promise? Would India’s tiered missile defence system, which consists of a multi-layered approach to intercepting and neutralising incoming missiles or projectiles at different stages of their flight), along with its radars and integrated computer systems, prove more effective than the vaunted Israeli Iron Dome? The latter had been repeatedly breached in 2023-2024 by opponents such as Hamas, Iran, and even the Houthis in Yemen, using swarms of drones or missiles. Even with a 90% interception rate, a swarm attack could result in dozens of drones or missile strikes hitting Indian cities or military infrastructure.

The performance of such systems in real-life conflict scenarios must have weighed heavily on the minds of many, both in India and abroad. As a result, capitals beyond Delhi and Islamabad were keenly interested in the conflict from military, diplomatic, strategic, geopolitical, and commercial perspectives. The latter helps explain some of the intense disinformation being pushed in certain quarters.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 16 May 2025