The Dangers of Ashok Subron’s Personal Strategy Become Visible to All
13.06.2014
Since the outset, LALIT has strongly criticized the strategy used by Rezistans & Alternativ (RA) against the Best Loser System. We believed that their strategy would either lead nowhere or to a worse place. And it has. Their strategy has, en passant, further added to the incomprehension of the broad masses. It has even contributed, wily-nily, to the clear increase in communalism now manifested in the Machiavellian Ramgoolam-Bérenger plan for a New Republic.
Basically the RA strategy is a forked one, and they have finally impaled themselves on their own fork. Finally. But we will come to that later.
What was this strategy of RA? On the political front, they contest the Best Loser System with loud, if disturbingly hollow, statements. Meanwhile, on the litigation front, they assure the Supreme Court, the Privy Council and even the UN Human Rights Committee, and publicly swear under oath, that they are not contesting the Best Loser System at all, but merely seeking the right to not put a community on their Nomination Paper. So, it has been a nine-year persistence in “double-talk”, 2005 to 2014.
This has caused unspeakable confusion to grow. Radio announcers and journalists have, for 9 years confused, re-confused, over-confused, and ultra-confused themselves and the public by being prisoner of this RA “forked strategy” without unveiling the fork. They have been relentlessly mixing up and muddling these two completely contradictory actions – the political and the litigation – which rely for their continued mirage of “progrès” on the fact that RA leaders have consistently used this double-talk. They simultaneously, and with impunity, swear under oath that they will not in any way affect the operation of the Best Loser System, and they maintain pompously on the Radio that their aim is to finish the Best Loser System.
Our criticism was taken for “jealousy” by some of the more childish journalists. As if LALIT would resent a good initiative. How absurd. We in fact opposed the Subron strategy simply because we know the dossier, a complex one, well enough to see that they were making a grave mistake. And it is now eminently clear that we were right.
The first effect of their doomed strategy was to stop the flow of history for nine whole years, with everyone reduced to doing literally nothing but waiting for various judges to decide on something that it is not for a national judiciary, let alone a Colonial power’s one, decide. It is a political issue as Justice Seetulsing pointed out in his Supreme Court judgment in the case against LALIT’s candidates in 2000 after we had drawn lots to get a community to fill in, and so he called on the Government to come up with electoral reform. The Supreme Court was not able to classify candidates as the existing law forces them to do. So, nine years later, what is the situation after all the RA litigation? Indeed they have contributed to forcing us all, the entire nation, to this terrible cross-roads today, where Ramgoolam and Bérenger are using RA legal cases in order to cobble together not only a dangerous coalition between Government and Opposition but also a hideous Constitutional strait-jacket for the country. It is the working people, the poor and the youth who will suffer from both the looming private-sector backed and funded coalition and the Second Republic Labour-MMM are plotting.
Puffed himself up
Ashok Subron has, for 9 years, puffed himself up, again and again, congratulating himself on his own “audace”, on turning “page d’or de l’histoire”, no less, and on his very own series of “victoires historiques”, even as he has met defeat after defeat. He now claims to be the “moteur de l’histoire”, by which he seems to be claiming as his victory the PT-MMM coalition and the outrageously anti-democratic “partage de pouvoir” they intend to implement by institutionalizing a new ultra-communal social contract, while “respecting the UNHRC pronouncement in the RA case”.
Inflated by Ramgoolam and Bérenger
Subron has been further inflated, again and again by mainstream politicians. First by Bérenger when he was Prime Minister then by Ramgoolam, for a total of 9 years. These two leaders have progressively learned how to make use of Ashok Subron and his endless litigation as a mere pawn in their own personal tactics.
Pumped up by journalists
The press, always wanting a gormless “left” that does not, in the final analysis, challenge the rule of the capitalist class, has pumped him up relentlessly. To breaking point. Pipo Forget, the MCB and La Sentinelle press empire boss, even joined Subron’s Blok 104. As did other journalists. Two bourgeois press empires even made Subron their “Man of the Year”.
The RA baloon is now bursting. It had to. The two arms of the fork grew further and further apart inside the baloon full of “pompage” .
So, as things stand today: There will be a Mini-Amendment to permit, as Ramgoolam and Bérenger put it – the Rezistans candidates to stand for elections. The candidates of the main bourgeois parties will continue to declare their respective communities: the Best Loser will continue as before. The fork is exposed.
And then, later the Best Loser System “may”, we cannot even be sure it “shall”, be replaced by another best loser system – one that is less democratic and more broadly communal, and cemented into a social contract.
This takes them nowhere. Strangely, the Balancy judgement, 9 years ago, already exposed the fork. But, like the Emperor’s new clothes, people refused to see it.
And the coalition of PT and MMM, itself, could take us to a worse place. While the Second Republic of shared power assures the architecture of this bad place.
