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Christina Meetoo

On Media, Society and Mauritius

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Mauritius

The ethnic epidemic-Republic of Mauritius

12/09/2008 By christina 20 Comments

Photo courtesy of Avinash

Since the last few days, the talk of the town has been the unconstitutionality of the swearing in of three deputy prime ministers in this country. As we all know, these were designated to supposedly reassure the minority ethnic groups of this country (i.e. the Muslims, the Creoles and the Tamils). A silly calculation which most of our political leaders cannot seem to get rid of and most probably never will. It makes me even sadder when I hear some commentators claiming that if we are not careful to take everyone onboard, then there are risks… Surely, members of all the different ethnic groups of this country are not always carrying their ethnic-formulae packed calculators with them and assessing all decisions regarding nomination decisions in this country!

True, we have to take into consideration how representative our elected members of parliament are with respect to the demographics. BUT, it is saddening to see that we tend to focus only or much more on the ethnic criterion in this country. We also forget that competence is much more important. It should actually be THE factor par excellence. Then, if we can have wider ethnic representation so much the better but COMPETENCE should be the prime criterion, don’t you think?

A silly idea has come to my brain recently: what if we looked for a proper mixed-blood candidate for President / PM / etc. (with 50% Hindu, 16% Muslim, 3% Chinese and 31% General Population ancestors – based on the very dated 1972 census which is still used for the Best Loser System). Then, we’d be sure he or she is really representative of the population, isn’t it?

In any case, I wonder what extra duties these people have done just because they have been nominated DPM? Our Constitution provides for only one DPM and rightly so because he/she (hey, no-one talked about gender when more than 50% of the population is female!) can replace the PM when the latter is abroad (or dies or is sick or whatever…).

As for the successor of the President (which according to many may well be the current one himself), it’s the same story that is being dished out to us. Talk about a rancid meal, hey?

A play you must see: BARAZ
Incidentally, there was a very nice play which was staged on campus yesterday by Gaston Valayden and his Sapsiway group with the help of Amnesty International. It is a very simple story of two families from two different communities which are at loggerheads and decide to build a fence between their houses. The play is vibrantly acted by very able actors and the references are very realistic. It has a very harsh but true depiction of how our local politicians use divisive techniques (‘NOU BANNE’ vs ‘ZOT BANNE’) to gain votes and maintain the population in intellectual infancy.

The representation comes, according to me, at a very telling moment when the very loudspoken so-called representatives of ethnic groups of this country are competing to plead for ministers from their group in the context of a possible reshuffling of cabinet.

Speaking of cabinet, this makes me want to flush out all those silly people with silly arguments that can only make us become more silly as a nation. Cry, our beloved country!

Filed Under: General, Mauritius, Politics, Society, Uncategorized Tagged With: ethnic politics mauritius baraz play

Back to life

08/09/2008 By christina 2 Comments


Photo courtesy of Avinash

This blog has been dormant since May (yes, more than 4 months). So, it’s about time I brought it back to life. What happened? Well, the usual. Got busy doing many things, inter alia,
– playing a very tiny role in Wassim Sookia’s last film Rouzblézonnver, which won lots of first prizes in the MFDC festival
– acting as member of Mauritian assessment panel for the African Media Barometer of the Friedrich Ebert Stieftung Foundation
– being part of several committees for media campaigns at national level
– organising talks and being invited to several others
– getting busy for the UOM Research Week where we had the opportunity to test our cameras for micro-interviews with some volunteer students acting as journalists
– and of course, fun with the family at the hotel and for a series of birthday parties (no less than three parties for Anya alone!)

The latest activity was today when we were invited to a digital video conference at the US embassy about the nominating conventions for US presidential elections. This was the second DVC I attended and it was quite interesting though fraught with technical problems (aha, our infamous internet connection) and also intense debate between the speakers from Paris (a Republican vs. a Democrat!).

There were also some high profile local politicians (specially from the Opposition) which limited opportunities for asking questions as they tended to be given priority. It’s sometimes funny to see how politicians turn up and become active for all sorts of events when they are in the Opposition. Naturally when in government, they have other things, more important to do, which must have been the case of current members of government, of course, since they did not turn up…

Filed Under: Academia, General, Mauritius, Politics, Society, Uncategorized

Radio One show on political communication

01/05/2008 By christina 14 Comments

I was at Radio One this morning and was Finlay Salesse’s guest on a show about the political communication of local parties, especially in the context of Labour Day meetings.

We talked about the techniques and strategies used by our politicians to communicate with their audiences, their posters, their communication advisers, their websites, their willingness (or lack thereof) to participate in live debates on private radios, etc. and compared the Mauritian style of political communication with that of more advanced countries.

In sum, my main point was that our local politicians are completely archaic in their approach to communication. I tend to think that they need to rely on basic and superficial means that are loud, aggressive and even vulgar in order to mask the vacuum in terms of ideas and messages.

Treating us like dumb
Labour Day meetings are a complete waste of time, energy and resources. They don’t serve any constructive purpose and in fact, they do not contribute to the enlightenment of the masses, rather they treat ordinary citizens like dumb children who need to be cajoled, policed but never addressed in an intelligent manner. It is true that our voters do act in an immature way but do our decision-makers provide possibilities for acting differently? Do they treat the electorate as intelligent and capable of making their own judgements based on facts, ideas and more importantly to question the super-leaders?

Even within the parties themselves, there is not much space for democracy. There might be temporary attempts at intelligent debates but it is not part of the DNA of our local political scene too accustomed to low-level arguments and the notion that super-leaders are ‘ene tigin pli tipti ki bon dié’. Our parties are run like archaic, medieval structures and even would-be ‘ténors’ within them toe the line for fear of losing their chances of climbing the hierarchy and get that so desirable possibility to be a candidate and later grab a ministry.

Young people are fed up with this situation and rightly so. It’s not the crowds of people in rallies/meetings that reflect what the masses think. Just like polls are not fool-proof. The grassroots are bored and tired. The only thing they can actually do is choose parties (not even candidates — as goes the local saying, ‘prend ene pié banane, peine li couleur parti ki pé gagner, li pou éli’) which are the least worst according to their personal judgement. A sad situation indeed for our democracry…

Filed Under: Mauritius, Politics, Press, Society, Uncategorized

Mauritius Union menace notre liberté d’expression

07/12/2007 By christina 2 Comments

Pour comprendre, lisez la dernière note d’Avinash sur son blog perso.

Filed Under: Mauritius, Society, Uncategorized

ICTA and Facebook

16/11/2007 By christina 11 Comments

trilockdwarka.jpg

So, after the Facebook – ICTA controversy, Trilock Dwarka, Chairman of the Authority, has admitted that the decision to block access to Facebook completely on Thursday 8th Nov (a black day for the Mauritian online democratic community) was excessive in an interview with L’Express on Tuesday 13th. But, he was shrewd enough to lay the blame completely on his director, Krishna Oolun. One can only wait for the latter’s reaction to confront the two versions. Is this the latest manifestation of the ‘Chairman vs. Director’ pandemic that seems to affect most of our parastatal bodies these days (look at Enterprise Mauritius, NPCC, IBA, MBC, etc.)?

However this did not prevent the guy from trying to find some justifications to the decision by evoking problems such as frauds, cyber-bullying and minors being at risk (Is the PM a minor, BTW, who needs so much protection?). The typical discourse of people who want to control what we read, see and hear… They say they want to protect us, but they are caught more often protecting themselves or their interests or those who can promote/demote them (their temporary Gods on earth)!

Anyway, isn’t it funny that the guy says there is a need to have a position paper on social networking? Bet you he did not even know what this means a few months ago. And, for god’s sake, will they have position papers on every new platform that gets created on the Internet (and the pace is accelerating; who, in Mauritius, knew about Facebook two years back?). So, let’s have a position paper on Hi5, MySpace, Orkut, every single blog and forum, e-mails, chats, newsgroups, YouTube, Yahoo, Flickr, Google, Amazon, and what not. At least, it would keep them busy… Provided they don’t end up with a silly campaign like the NCB anti-spam campaign (which did not have spam companies like RKCommunications out of business).

BTW, with Avinash, we were reflecting on how emblematic it is that those organisations get called Authority (IBA, ICTA) carrying this connotation of central control (whereas new media and Internet are the exact opposite). In France, the equivalent of the Independent Broadcasting Authority is the Conseil Supérieur de l’Audiovisuel (CSA) and the equivalent of ICTA is the Commission Nationale Informatique et Liberté (CNIL)… Would the CNIL do a similar (dis)service to Chirac, Sarkozy et tutti quanti? Yes, this is disservice as the response from the Mauritian Facebook Community is more violent than the initial parodic pages of the PM. Just type the name of Navin Rangoolam in the search field of Facebook and you will see what I mean. The groan is growing day by day… Aster la li pu vine vraiment vilain!

And finally, on telecommunications costs: how much time will they continue to take us for fools? When it comes to applying new reductions in tariffs, it takes a month or so to be able to do that for administrative reasons: it takes time to adjust and deploy the new tariffs (aren’t they computerised in this so-called cyber island?). But when it comes to raising prices, all operators are suddenly very efficient at deploying the new tariffs over a single day at times.

This is paradise island…

Filed Under: Mauritius, New Media, Politics, Society, Uncategorized Tagged With: Facebook ICTA censorship

Notre cirque politique

29/10/2007 By christina 3 Comments

Lu dans L’Express-Samedi du 27 octobre, dans la rubrique ‘Confidentiels’:

Motus et bouche cousue
Le bureau du Premier ministre a émis des ordres très stricts. Les conseillers en communication ne sont plus autorisés à parler à la presse sans autorisation de leurs ministres. Une circulaire dans ce sens a été envoyée aux attachés de presse.

Des conseillers en communication qui ne peuvent pas communiquer… On aura tout vu dans ce pays! L’explication de cette décision se trouve sans doute dans les pages de l’Express-Dimanche du 21 octobre où Bettina Cadinouche, conseillère en com du PM lâche quelques vérités crues du style

‘Mais pour moi, la MBC est tout sauf un outil de propagande ; ce sont des fossoyeurs.’,
‘Des yes-men, il y en a suffisamment parmi les ministres, les députés et les visiteurs d’un jour.’

Ce qui est étonnant c’est que Dinesh Ramjuttun, lui, a eu tout le loisir de déverser des critiques directes à l’encontre des ministres pendant plusieurs jours sans qu’aucune circulaire de ce type n’ait été émise (en tout cas cela n’a pas été rapporté par la presse).

Au contraire, selon ses dires, Navin l’a gentiment prié de rester pendant un bon bout de temps malgré son ‘insolence’… jusqu’à ce que l’indécence de ce super conseiller (qu’il n’a pas reçu pendant 4 bons mois) ne devienne insoutenable.

Quant aux partis de l’opposition, comme on dit ici, topette vaut pas morette (pas sûre de l’orthographe). Tantôt ils semblent en passe de se faire les yeux doux, tantôt c’est l’insulte infantile. Paul, Pravind, Ashok, et maintenant Dinesh, quel panthéon!

Y’a de quoi se mettre à regarder Tulsi…

Filed Under: Mauritius, Politics, Society, Uncategorized Tagged With: mauritius society politics communication advisers

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