When I learned that Steeve Obeegadoo had been sanctioned by his peers for an interview he gave to a weekly, a move initiated and orchestrated by whom we know, I could hardly believe ‘the guy’, in yet another ill-advised and ill-timed move, seems bent on accelerating the decline of the MMM, already almost terminally ill and right on the path of becoming a ‘has been’ in a not too distant future, unless…! Obeegadoo and many others before him have tried and failed. Is there anybody around bold enough to try anew, and above all succeed ?
Save for a handful of diehards, sycophants and the like eager only to please the boss, any right-minded observer knows that in his interview Obeegadoo merely stated stark facts, though somewhat mealy-mouthed, already crystal clear, especially since the stunning plot twist of 2014 which shook the MMM as never before, significantly altered the political configuration and confirmed that, in spite of bold statements of ‘parti structuré avec ses instances dirigeantes démocratiquement constituées(?), the Party has for long been almost a one-man show despite the occasional expertly-concocted masquerades in Belle Rose, a party managed at the whims and fancy of someone ‘often wrong in his calculations’ (Foreign and Commonwealth Office dixit). Plainly exemplified by this latest attempt to silence, even eliminate, yet another one who will not kowtow.
Apart from the blind followers and diehards of any stamp, anybody with some commonsense knows that the days of ‘major challenger and king-maker’ go back well to the latter part of the past century, days many reminisce with a pinch in the heart, while today the MMM, or rather what remains of it, is, in the main, only a lair of dinosaurs, yes-men and sycophants completely out of phase with present day realities – in all honesty, it must be conceded there are a few marked exceptions. A party, as it now stands, condemned, at the next day of reckoning, to beg a place in an alliance and get it on humiliating terms. Or, if that stings ‘his’ pride, go it solo straight to ‘labatwar’, despite the stupid and oft-repeated ‘plus fort que jamais’. Do not the rout of December 2014, the unprecedented humiliation of June 2015 and the ‘kas kase’ of December last, in quick succession, prove that in an apodictic manner ?
Moreover, by attacking Obeegadoo, ‘the guy’ has, in spite of pretending to be smarter than ‘all’ others, albeit unwittingly (given some realities he fails to grasp) yet dangerously, fired at the ‘last of the Mohicans’ who matter. Mauritian politics has some deep-seated realities not always appropriate to be laid bare in public comments. But the shrewd reader will understand.
En passant, it would be interesting to know ‘les états d’âme’ of Obeegadoo now that his latest initiative has failed, indeed nearly back-fired, he who, unlike the Ganoo, Barbier, Ramano and others who chose to quit in 2015, opted to stay put to ‘reform from within’. Reform while ‘the guy’ is still around? My foot! His next moves, from now on, will demonstrate whether he has the guts to pursue his crusade, even cross the Rubicon*, or just be remembered as yet another one ‘the guy’ has tamed or even cut down to size, indeed ‘avoy manze’. The seven BP members who disagreed represent a glimmer of hope someone may eventually turn the tables, with the ‘opposition’ having, finally, gathered sufficient momentum to do that. I have a vague recollection of someone talking of ‘dernie lagar’ in December 2014. Can Obeegadoo be instrumental to that?
But, be that as it may, however conceited one may be, however much imbued with any self-delusive conviction of a divine right to lead and command unchallenged, one may never successfully fool everybody all the time.
Reality never fails to hit back!
(* I leave it to the reader to visualize the different avenues. But it can be possible to bring back to the fold that chunk of supporters who quit in 2005 and, more importantly, reverse the exodus of the mainstay who made it clear, from 2014 onwards, ‘no more of that nonsense’. But there is a price to pay, a myth to bury and a quasi-monopoly to batter down, in short the prime immediate targets).