Mauritius Times

Founded in 1954 by Beekrumsingh Ramlallah

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"When you’re taking flak, you must be over the target"

-- Jim Robinson

The Week In Review

The Presidential Campaign: The Race Issue Now In The Forefront

-- PARAMANAND SOOBARAH

It was too good to be true. All this time there was not a hint of the words race, racial and racist in the media, in spite of the fact that Barack Obama belongs to a race that has long been subjugated in America - not through the fault of any living person, but because that’s how history developed. It is true that the McCain campaign is at a loss for arguments and is trailing at the polls, and is resorting to all sorts of attacks on Barack Obama that can only be described at mud-slinging. But the race issue they had not touched. It was Obama himself who hinted at it in a political speech. He was merely pointing out that the other side was resorting to mean tactics, like for instance that he has a funny name and that his face is not like those on the dollar bills. This was immediately interpreted as a racist remark, and the blogs are now full of racial slurs of all kinds.

To an outside observer, it does appear that the Obama campaign has sought to benefit from the racial issue by appealing to the emotions of the fair-minded segment of the population. One recalls the totally unjustified attacks against Hilary Clinton that she had been lacking in respect towards Martin Luther King because she had mentioned President Johnson in the same sentence as the great black civil rights leader. All African Americans, including such leaders as Jesse Jackson, had thought that Hilary had misbehaved. But there was more emotion than reason in their reaction; Dr King’s movement would have led nowhere without the staunch support, legislative initiatives and personal exhortations through long speeches of President Johnson.

Nearer home, would anybody be regarded as being disrespectful of Nelson Mandela if one were to mention Frederic W. de Klerk in same sentence? Had there been another president in South Africa, Nelson Mandela would probably be still in jail.

Hilary Clinton is campaigning actively in favour of Barack Obama. Her own campaign is badly in the red, owing more than 20 million dollars, and she has to work hard to pay that back. Barack will be announcing his choice for Vice-President shortly, but it almost certain that Hilary is not on the short-list. It is doubtful, after the recriminations during the primaries, whether they could even work together. President Clinton has not fully recovered from the attacks he received from the Obamites. The Clintons were in a very vulnerable position during that campaign because throughout the presidency of Bill Clinton he and Hilary had identified themselves with the black community. They could not hit back as hard as they might have. Any explanations they could have offered would have been immediately distorted by the media which were totally on Barack Obama’s side. The media are still on the side of Barack Obama, but the McCain campaign is less sensitive to charges of racism than the Clintons. If the Obamites go overboard on the issue as they did during the primaries, they are likely to lose out.

The Democratic Convention is coming up at the end of the month in Denver, Colorado, where Obama will be officially designated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party. The supporters of Hilary Clinton, even though not Hilary herself, are determined to make a stand at the Convention. They feel they have been cheated out of their candidate by unfair means, though nobody is able to put the finger exactly on the problem. Former President Bill Clinton himself, now very busy with the work of his AIDS foundation, has hinted that there still things to say about the primaries, and that he will choose his time for doing so.

After eight years of George W. Bush, this should have been the easiest campaign for the Democratic Party. The economic situation, the rise in energy and food prices, and home repossessions should be helping democrats. But with the race issue having raised its head, things can go awry for them. Among the African Americans, 98% favour Barack Obama. They should not act in a way that leads the same percentage of the others to favour John McCain.

Will George W. Bush leave in a blaze or a whimper?

President George W. Bush is at Beijing for the Olympics. On the way there he stopped off in Bangkok to give a speech that he should have given in Beijing, calling attention to the human rights record of the Chinese government. In Beijing itself he intends to behave himself as per the wishes of his Chinese hosts and just watch the games and act as cheerleader for the American team. He is already on his way out, and it looks like he may want to go quietly. But then his impulsive nature can take over and some fear that he may decide to unleash another war before he goes.

Everybody had thought that were this to happen, it would be Iran that would be the target. But now it appears that he has a choice. His closest ally on terror, Pakistan, has now become his greatest problem. It seems to have dawned on him finally that it was not Saddam Hussein that was the greatest enemy of mankind but Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which his predecessor Ronald Reagan had a hand in creating in his fight against the Soviet Union. His own fight against terror is losing ground.

In the real battleground which Afghanistan is, the insurgents are gaining ground everyday. In the daytime they withdraw into the country of his best friend Pervez Musharraf, but at night they come back and kill his troops. It is now proven that the secret service of Pakistan, the ISI, has secretly been helping the insurgents and passing on to them whatever plans the Americans reveal to their Pakisani counterparts of their proposed actions against the insurgents - to say nothing of the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul. Prime Minister Gilani, during his recent visit to Washington, was not able to offer the desired reassurance of his being able to control the ISI or to effectively mount a campaign against the insurgents. He did try hard, but President Musharraf and General Kayani defeated him. In any case, how can a government take action against its own citizens for putting into practice what is taught in every one of its elementary schools?

The pressure in Washington is mounting for a direct attack on the insurgents in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), and the pros and cons of putting the American military machine into a position where it might come directly against the Pakistani one are being weighed. After watching the fireworks in Beijing at the opening of the Olympic Games, President Bush may decide to go in some similar festival of fireworks but with his characteristic one-upmanship he will add cannon balls and bombs to his display. The children in America will only see it on TV as it will all be played out in faraway Pakistan.

Some news items of interest

Salim Ahmed Hamdan: In the first military trial at Guantanamo Bay, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden’s driver, has been convicted of having committed a war crime; sentence will be announced later. This was by all counts a controversial trial, and even the verdict was split. The Bush Administration has intimated that it will not feel bound to release the driver even if the judges decide to free him immediately, after taking into account that he has already spent five years in jail. If President Bush is impeached some day, or better still, if he is tried for war crimes, one hopes that his many drivers and pilots will not be prosecuted like Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Russian Nobel Prize winner for literature who in the seventies exposed the atrocities of the Stalin era, and who was seriously harassed by the Soviet authorities before being banished outright by them, died in Moscow and was given a State funeral which was attended inter alia by Prime Minister Putin.

Mauritania: The military in Mauritania have carried out a coup d’Etat against the first elected government and taken over the running of the country.

African values: In South Africa, ANC President Jacob Zuma has appeared in Court in the course of the corruption case being conducted against him, and has asked the court to dismiss the case "out of respect":. In parallel with "Asian values": that people have been talking about laughingly since the nineties when corruption charges were levelled against political leaders in South East Asia, a clear set of African values are emerging. The dismissing of a case of corruption on the grounds of "respect":, at least the request for that to happen, is just one such value. Another one came to light recently in Kenya, when the party that won the election was expected, and has indeed agreed, to participate in the government as the junior partner. In Zimbabwe, it was worse: the winner was threatened with violence to the point that he had to seek shelter in a foreign embassy, but those in power have finally been persuaded to comply with African values: let the winner join you as junior partner, please, as otherwise Africa will laugh at us. The rest of the world can "go hang":. God help Africa!

In the Middle East, politics is taking a back seat

This does not mean that things are not happening. The suicide bombers have not taken a holiday. The Israelis are continuing with their settlement activity: to all of us a most unforgivable sin, but to them a God-given right; the land was apparently promised to them by God Almighty, according to the Bible. Never mind that they were thrown out of there by the Romans two thousand years ago. When beliefs thought to emanate from religion, however illogical they might be, take over, reason and all considerations of humaneness take a back seat.

In Iraq, parliament has not been able to agree to a law on local government which was essential to permit forthcoming local elections to take place. In the northern city of Kirkuk, currently under the control of the Kurds, the latter have refused to share the control with other sections of the population. For now there is no peaceful solution in sight. Some think that the real fireworks will begin when the Americans have left.

The Israelis are still toying with the idea of invading Iran, but they are hamstrung by their own political problems and are also being held back by the Americans, who think that it is Pakistan that deserves their immediate attention. President Ahmedinadjad meanwhile is skillfully playing for time and keeping the Europeans engaged.

South Asia in Turmoil

Pakistan: The PPP and PML-N leaders Asif Ali Zardari and Nawaz Sharif have agreed to join forces to do what they promised they would do in the election campaign. They have asked President Musharraf to step down, and if he does not, they intend to initiate parliamentary procedures to impeach him. They have also agreed upon action regarding the deposed judges; details are awaited. But after the failure of the Prime Minister to bring the ISI under control, there is very little likelihood of his being able to impeach the President, even with the parliamentary majority that he now commands. The stage seems to be set for yet another military coup.

While this is going on in Islamabad, the Taliban are not sleeping. The Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan have announced that they have a large number of highly motivated "boys and girls": to mount suicide attacks all over the country. The civil situation in Pakistan is likely to get worse, with lots of innocent men, women and children being hurt even if they do not wish to participate in these political squabbles. This sort of unsettled situation also favours military coups, for the generals argue that they have a duty to intervene to keep the country from falling into anarchy. Watch this space.

India: National elections are not far away. Therefore the most important issue in the country is the protection of Muslim vote bank. While the main Muslim organisations are calling peaceful co-existence - the famous Madrassa of Deoband having even ’outlawed’ terrorism -- the lunatic fringe is very active. Last week there were the bombings in Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Surat, for which the Indian Mujahideen claimed responsibility. Another organisation, the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) with the avowed aim of "reconquering India for the Muslims": and which was involved in several instances of terrorism in the past, had been banned by the BJP government. The ban was reviewed at the request of SIMI earlier this week by the Delhi High Court, and the lower cadres of the government, mindful of the interests of their bosses in the vote bank, were lukewarm in defending their case; the judges had no alternative but to lift the ban.

The Headquarters of the Congress Party were quite surprised at this development, and have ordered an appeal to the Supreme Court. It is true that the parties in power at the Centre, namely the Congress of Sonia Gandhi, the RJD of Lalu Prasad Yadav and their ally the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav actually depend on Muslim votes to stay in power. Of course they also need the other segments of the population, but these people will vote for them anyway. But as a serious party of government the Congress could not allow an organisation openly dedicated to the "conquest": of the country to act with impunity. Hence their request for the appeal.

The Supreme Court has ordered a stay of action pending their hearing of the case. But Messrs Lalu Yadav and Mulayam Singh Yadav do not have such compunctions, and they have expressed their disappointment and even their anger at the action of the Supreme Court for all to hear.

So many Hindus get killed on the road everyday, argue the Yadavs. What’s the problem if a few more get killed in these juvenile attacks by over-zealous students? Their families will get a thousand dollars for each person killed - that’s more money than any one of them can see in their entire lives. They are worth more dead to their families than alive - why don’t those BJP folk understand this simple piece of arithmetic? The most important consideration surely is that great leaders like Shri Lalu Prasad Yadav and Shri Mulayam Singh Yadav retain their power!

In the State of Jammu and Kashmir, protests at the reversal by the State government of their decision to grant 40 acres of land for the construction of facilities to receive the Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath Shrine have continued, with some people being killed in police action. That’s Hindus being killed by the police this time, it is necessary to explain. What is not clear is to what extent Mr Goolam Nabee Azad, the State’s Chief Minister who had taken the initiative to grant the land -- as also to launch a plan to resettle the Kashmiri Pandits who had been expelled from their homes by Muslim zealots - had been coerced by Sonia Gandhi into reversing his plan in the face of mounting protests in Srinagar. What next?

National Matters

The Teaching of Creole and Bhojpuri in our Schools

According to press reports, Mr Dharam Gokhool, our Minister of Education, has agreed with the Catholic education authorities to start a pilot project for the teaching of Creole. In the same encounter he also mentioned the question of Bhojpuri. By doing so Mr Gokhool will only be officialising the actual state of affairs. I understand that Creole is the medium that is used in primary schools to teach all subjects. Pupils do not go to school to learn Creole, but to learn whatever else is taught - in the medium of Creole. This is a problem only for children like me who do not speak Creole on reaching school. Regardless of the fact that the proportion of such children is relatively small nowadays, the fact remains that Bhojpuri is still the mother tongue of many in this country; it is the only language other than Creole that by and large people speak around the countryside. If Creole is to be taught, it is essential that a parallel programme of teaching Bhojpuri is also undertaken.

On the subject of Creole itself, I would advise the Minister to proceed with caution. The MMM have been characterized by their habit of rushing into ill-thought or insufficiently thought out action ever since they came to power in 1982. The Minister, having abandoned the party, must also ensure that he has abandoned all their impulses.

Only a foolish person will want their child who has never conversed in French or English at home to be taught in either of these two languages at the primary level. But it would be an equally foolish person who would think all knowledge, culture and civilisation should come to his child only in Creole. This truth must be recognised by everybody that the first window that allows to our children a glimpse of western civilisation is the French language. Nobody can be considered literate in Mauritius if they do not read French. English is certainly more important in the business world, and that too has to come - but at a later stage. Basic literacy assessment should be on the ability to read and understand French. Other languages, like Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Telugu and Marathi are cultural assets and very welcome, but the first essential language for literacy in Mauritius must remain the French Language. This is where any programme to teach the Creole language using the idiotic "grafilarmoni": of the MMM crowd is a great danger.

Actually, what is normally meant by the expression "teaching Creole": is the teaching of a script for writing it - for nobody in the country beyond the age of seven or eight needs to be taught to speak it. Anybody can devise a script, but the one devised by the grafilarmoni crowd is totally inimical to French spelling. French has been taught in our schools since the early days of colonisation; this was so even when the children of newly arrived immigrants from India could not master Creole easily. An ability to speak Creole is without doubt a great help in learning French, but even so the children of the early coolies succeeded in learning the language. What they did should be possible for children of all communities today. Therefore written Creole is not a sine qua non condition for teaching or learning French. But written Creole, if written in the grafilarmoni script, can become a great obstacle to that process.

There should not be any objection to anybody reading a piece of text in Creole, if satisfactory conventions for converting text to speech exist or can be devised. It would even be a great advantage for writing commercial or political slogans. But the phonetic patterns prescribed for writing Creole in the grafilarmoni script, in addition to ignoring the sounds of the Creole words like "l’air": and "lire":, totally disregard French spelling-to-speech conventions and therefore, if learnt by a child, will interfere badly with the child’s subsequent ability to read or write French correctly. It is not a difficult task to compile a lexicon of Creole words which respect the spelling patterns of the French words from which they are derived. It is even not out of the realms of possibility to devise a computer programme that automatically converts French words into Creole. For this conversion, one principle must be respected: the spelling must not be changed in cases where a simple rule permits the reading of a French word in Creole. As an example, the French consonant sounds "ch":, "j": should not be converted into "s":, "z":, nor should the vowel groups "au":, "oi": be converted into "o":, "wa":, etc., because the Creole sounds of those letter combinations can easily be taught. If a purely phonetic script is required, the script of the International Phonetic Association is already available.

The vast majority of people in this country are not interested in spoiling the ability of their children to read, write and speak French merely to allow some to link up with other people writing a simplified Creole script in the Caribbean. Those who wish to correspond with other Creole script writers in the world can easily learn the script in their own time, or learn it in adult education classes later.

We would therefore submit that the Minister sets up a small technical committee to produce a short lexicon of Creole words respecting the spellings of their French sources, and in those cases where a French source does not exist, their nearest French transcriptions.

In addition to a lexicon of Creole words, it is also necessary to devise a syllabary of all languages spoken in Mauritius, including English, French and the current Asian languages, including Mandarin and Hakaa. The following reason is advanced in an MIE document for reviewing language education policy: "Too many languages competing for a child’s attention in the early years of the Primary School resulting in cross-language interferences, future illiteracy among those who cannot cope with the situation.": Cross-language interference results from bad teaching, not from bad learning. Very few teachers can write a sentence of English free of French interference. Besides we cannot have a one-size-fits-all system of education, unless we accept a "nivellement par le bas": policy, which might be motivated by socialist tendencies or just by plain laziness or even by plain stupidity. The time for applying ideology in social matters is long past. Those who refuse to be pragmatic will fail. That is no reason for everybody else to fail.

The best time for learning languages, one or more, is early childhood. Experience abroad has shown that multilingual children are more intelligent than comparable monolingual ones. What we need in Mauritius is a syllabary that teaches the sounds of all our languages, including English. As a minimum, the names of people should be pronounced correctly. There is absolutely no need for anybody to pronounce the name "Dharam": as if it was a Creole name. Producing the sort of syllabary required is not a difficult matter at all. It would also come in handy for introducing elementary Bhojpuri sentences to children. It would be best to assign the task to a small technical committee. But for God’s sake, assign it to more competent and less ideologically committed people than the grafilarmoni chaps.

Developing Rose Belle

There has been some talk of developing Rose Belle into a modern city in the Press. I do not know how serious the intentions are, but some related information may be of interest to readers. Rose Belle is practically in the path of aircraft approaching Plaisance from Bigara. The actual point at which the aircraft passes near the village is not important, for the construction of the path allows for some flexibility to the right or to the left, and even below, the ideal geometrical path. It would be impossible for skyscrapers to be built at Rose Belle. That may not be an important matter today, but with time, all inhabited areas in the country will have to grow vertically upwards. Every area in the country is free to do so except the bit of the Island that lies between Nouvelle France and Plaisance.

Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam had found it surprising that I had raised objections to some construction or other near the Airport. At every airport he visited, he said, his aircraft passed over high buildings before landing. Yes Sir, I said, but only in Mauritius does the approach path pass so close to the ground for a distance of twenty kilometres (I was then Director of Civil Aviation). In fact, all the way from Bigara to Plaisance, the aircraft passes so close to the ground that one feels somebody could hit it with a stone. It was with great difficulty, and with some twisting of the international regulations on the subject at the time, that I designed the approach path that permitted the installation of the Instrument Landing System that opened up the airport.

The proper place for an international airport for the country is its northern half. Better still would be a runway in the sea off the northern end of the Island, even though that would be somewhat expensive. A Select Committee of the National Assembly set up in 1980 had agreed that, for safety reasons, the country’s airport be built at Plaine des Roches. The National Assembly itself unanimously ratified those findings. But barely two years later, the MMM government rashly decided to abandon the project. All the Opposition members who had participated in the work of the Select Committee were in the Cabinet that reversed the decision. The full story of these developments has yet to be told.

PARAMANAND SOOBARAH

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