The Sacred Sedan, the Forbidden Fruit, and the Irony of Et La Vie Continue

Socratic Dialogue

By Plutonix

In the shaded calm of his veranda, the usually composed Cephalus, a wealthy and increasingly cynical businessman, finds himself undone not by market chaos, but by the absurd theatre of his political allies. He rages to Socrates – the relentless interrogator of men’s motives – about the great crisis of the Alliance du Changement: the formidable leader, Polo, dared to challenge the Prime Minister’s constitutional authority for a matter of principle, only to be forcibly restrained by his own parliamentary cohort. Socrates, ever the pragmatist, forces Cephalus to examine this moment of mutiny. Is the minister’s ultimate loyalty to the ideal, or to the indispensable perks of office? Their dialogue strips away the grand rhetoric to reveal the ugly truth: when power is threatened, the ministers will defend the Sacred Sedan and the Forbidden Fruit of Power at all costs, forcing their leader to accept the cynical reality of Et La Vie Continue (And life goes on).

Scene: A small, highly polished table on Cephalus’s veranda. Cephalus is examining an editorial clipping with the fury of a man who just discovered a massive tax audit. Socrates sips tepid water.

Socrates: Cephalus, my friend, you promised me a discussion on the art of political defection, and yet, here you are, chewing on a piece of newsprint as if it contained the secret to perpetual youth. What calamity has the city witnessed this time? Has the market for shipbuilding collapsed, or have your political friends finally managed to break something truly important?

Cephalus: Socrates, they have broken logic! And they have made a mockery of leadership! Look here, at the saga of the Alliance du Changement. The long-standing, occasionally temperamental, leader of our allied party, Polo, made a dramatic play. He demanded a new stack of high-stakes appointments — the Police Commissioner, the Commissioner of Prisons, the Air Mauritius Chairman, even the acting head of the FCC! He challenged the Prime Minister’s very authority, a magnificent, bold move!

Socrates: Ah, a list of demands. Like a child at the market demanding a specific basket of the choicest olives and figs…

Cephalus: Precisely! Political observers correctly state this was a direct challenge to the Prime Minister’s constitutional prerogative. No self-respecting PM, they say, could accept such an encroachment! The PM holds the constitutional authority, the title deed to the executive branch, as it were.

Socrates: Let us clarify this constitutional prerogative. When two men form an alliance to govern, one is declared the Prime Minister — the Pilot of the Ship of State — by the law, is he not?

Cephalus: He is. The PTr leader holds the helm.

Socrates: And the other, Polo, is the leader of the allied, but subordinate, party, correct?

Cephalus: Correct. He brings the necessary seats to maintain the majority, but the helm is not his.

Socrates: Then, if Polo, standing merely as a partner, demands the removal of the Pilot’s chosen crew — the Commissioner, the Chairman — is he not asking the Pilot to surrender his constitutional tools and the very skill for which he was appointed? Is he demanding to steer the ship from the passenger deck?

Cephalus: He is! And that is why the Prime Minister could never accept it! It would be to declare, “My authority is merely temporary, and yours is absolute.”

Socrates: Very well. So, the initial action — Polo’s audacious challenge — was an act of political self-sabotage, since it violated the established rules of the partnership.

Cephalus: But that is not the part that truly upsets me, Socrates. The shocking part is the consequence! Polo suddenly threatened to resign, to pull his party out of the alliance! To sacrifice everything for principle!

Socrates: A tragic, yet noble, end to the play! The leader martyrs himself for the higher ideal.

Cephalus: Not so! His own ministers and members of Parliament staged a mass internal revolt! They refused to go! They opened direct lines to the PTr — the opposing faction — and effectively held their own leader captive, forcing him to declare, “Demain, on sera au Conseil des ministres. Et la vie continue.” The revolt was against their own shepherd, Socrates, to protect the very pasture he threatened to burn down!

Socrates: Ah, the “mass internal revolt.” We spoke before of the Treasures of the State — the Sacred Sedan, the Ministerial Portfolio, the power of the official rubber stamp. When Polo demanded the list of appointments, he was asking the Prime Minister to open the Treasure Chest wider. But when he threatened to resign, what was he threatening to do to his own followers?

Cephalus: To shut the chest entirely! To send them back to the Political Wilderness, where the Sedan turns into a private bicycle and the portfolio into a pamphlet!

Socrates: Exactly! The follower’s ultimate value, as we agreed, is the acquisition and preservation of the material perk. The Minister’s loyalty is not to the man named Polo, but to the office named Minister. Let us imagine the Minister’s soul as a vast counting house.

Cephalus: A fine analogy. Filled with invoices and expense reports.

Socrates: In one ledger, titled “Loyalty to the Leader,” the Minister sees a decade of dutiful service, the rhetoric of revolution, and the promise of future glory. This is a debt, but an abstract one.

Cephalus: A paper asset.

Socrates: In the other ledger, titled “The Ministerial Portfolio,” the Minister sees the present value: the salary deposited this month, the chauffeur awaiting outside the gate, the power to sign documents that actually change things — even if only the decor of his own office. This is tangible, immediate, and fungible.

Cephalus: He can see the gold, Socrates.

Socrates: When Polo threatens resignation, he forces the Minister to choose which ledger to destroy. The choice is between preserving the abstract debt (loyalty) and preserving the immediate gold (perks). Which choice ensures the Minister’s political and financial survival?

Cephalus: To save the gold! They saw Polo’s move as a “solitary, opposition-bound adventure” — a flight from power. The Minister’s loyalty, it appears, is primarily to the continuity of the government that employs him.

Socrates: Precisely. This is not disloyalty; it is pragmatic self-preservation. It confirms our previous finding: The Ministers’ loyalty is secondary to the primary political good, which is the holding of office. Their action — opening direct channels with the PTr — was not treachery against their party, but loyalty to their own self-interest. They effectively declared, “The alliance is greater than the leader’s whim, because the alliance is where the Sedans are parked.”

Cephalus: So, the ministers — having apparently been too long in the opposition before this alliance — are merely terrified of returning to that barren land. They tasted the forbidden fruit of power, and now they will not let their leader take it away.

Socrates: Indeed. Polo, in that moment, became a threat to the established order of his own group. He was no longer a distributor of power, but a potential destructor of portfolios. What happens to the value of a leader when he threatens to destroy the very assets he is supposed to be guarding?

Cephalus: He is utterly devalued. His ability to command is annihilated.

Socrates: A military general commands troops by promising victory and survival. If the general, in a fit of rage, threatens to firebomb his own camp rather than retreat, the troops are entirely justified in seizing his sword. Polo, in threatening to take the whole party into the wilderness, forced his followers to view him not as a leader, but as a liability.

Cephalus: And his public retreat — the quiet, almost dismissive declaration “et la vie continue ” — is the clear signal that he is now constrained by the pragmatism of his own parliamentary group. He is a general who was disarmed by his own lieutenants.

Socrates: You have grasped the ugly essence of it, Cephalus. In modern democracy, the Minister’s mandate, once he has achieved office, is to remain in office. Any leader, even a revered one, who threatens that stability, is instantly transformed into a political pariah by his own people. Loyalty is a commodity bought by the promise of the next paycheck; when the leader threatens to shred the paycheck, the commodity is instantly withdrawn.

Cephalus: It is a pathetic, yet entirely rational, conclusion. Polo must have realised that his authority was not derived from his history, nor his principles, but from his capacity to keep the Sacred Sedans on the road. And when he threatened to turn them all into private bicycles, the party revolt saved the day — not for the Prime Minister, but for their own expense accounts.

Socrates: A brilliant summation, Cephalus. Et la vie continue, indeed, but now we know who dictates the terms of that continuation: the Minister, desperately clinging to his well-padded seat of power.

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Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 14 November 2025