Xavier Duval PNQ bodes ill for the Opposition Program on Diego Garcia
27.07.2023
Even the Law Lords and Ladies sitting on the Privy Council reminded us earlier this month of the Labour Party’s confusion, as exposed in the Suren Dayal case, about what a political program is. A political “program” is, one of Judges said, what a party campaigns in favour of.
A program is not just a bit of paper.
A program is the totality of a hopefully logical set of proposals that the Party campaigns upon, and it is based on a common understanding amongst those in the Party as to what needs to be done.
All this to say that we, in LALIT, are always trying to glean what the “program” is of the mainstream parties, the Labour Party, the MMM and the PMSD, especially as they have recently announced the cobbling together a new alliance. On what program are they campaigning on the Diego Garcia military base issue, for example?
At the 4th July sitting of the National Assembly, we got a quick look at the Parliamentary Opposition’s program on Diego Garcia. It was a rude shock. A crude shock. A reality check for us all. It, like the MSM program on Diego Garcia, has to be rejected.
Xavier Duval, PMSD leader and also Leader of the whole Opposition, thus leader of the totality of Labour, MMM and PMSD in Parliament, took the ridiculous stand of criticizing Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth, not for offering to sell Diego Garcia to the USA (a 100-year- lease), but for not asking for a high enough price for the shameful lease!
Here is what the Leader of the Opposition said in the name of the PMSD – and this has been their program since 1965 – and he said it in the name also of the other two parties, Labour and the MMM, in his Private Notice Question (PNQ).
Hansard gives this report (unrevised version):
Mr X. L. Duval: “Mr Speaker, Sir, I would like to ask the Hon. Prime Minister; given that we have sovereignty on the whole of the Chagos, including Diego Garcia, therefore, the base will be leased by the US, and I wish to remind the Hon. Prime Minister that the US Government is paying Rs3 billion a year for a smaller, lesser base in Djibouti. Therefore, what is the quantum of compensation, rent, compensation to the Chagossians, resettlement fees that is presently on the table being asked by the Government of Mauritius? From my calculation, it should be above Rs50 billion”.
Of course, the Prime Minister jumped at this opportunity to get support from the Opposition to “vann Diego”, and replied instantly, as reported in Hansard: “The Prime Minister: Okay, so, I take note of the proposal of the Hon. Leader of the Opposition. I heard Rs50 billion. Well, Mr Speaker, Sir, we are not yet there. When we are there, we will, of course, inform the House and Mauritius.”
Mr. Duval then dives further into the mire: “The Rs50 billion is not un chiffre farfelu; it is a national (sic) figure calculated carefully. Therefore, is the Hon. Prime Minister confirming that there is an amount for resettlement, for compensation, for rent, for back rent that is being asked of the UK Government? Just the fact at the moment!”
Then banter becomes haggling at a street market, “Mr. X. L. Duval: Much more than that … The Prime Minister: The hon. Leader of the Opposition is saying ‘much more’;”
In LALIT, we then followed the media to see if the MMM and Labour would distance themselves from this project to “vann Diego” for the very first time in history. Silans radyo.
Military bases are not a simple effect of militarism. They are one of the causes of war. We have seen this in the war in Ukraine. The USA uses its bases to encircle and to what it calls “contain” Russia and China. The word “contain” means to “close in to a fixed area”.
It, the USA, does not supposedly need to be “contained”, of course, within its borders. No. It has over 800 military bases, totally “uncontained”, well outside its own territory. They are a pestilence all over the globe.
It, the USA, is the only country ever to have dropped a nuclear bomb on anyone, and it has the cheek to seek to contain other countries?
The USA did not drop one such bomb. It dropped two. It did not drop two nuclear bombs on military targets, either. It specifically aimed at and obliterated two separate cities, cities that were nothing but pure civilian targets. It was slaughter. It was mass destruction. The USA dropped these bombs when the war was well-nigh over, as everyone knows.
When the USA, aided by the UK, fire-bombed the German city of Dresden earlier the same year, in 1945, that, too, had been a city known for its peacefulness and exquisite pottery and art, they burnt alive some 100,000 people. Slaughterhouse-5 is the name of the Kurt Vonnegut novel, perhaps the finest novel ever written, about this slaughter, of which he was a survivor. As the Encyclopedia Britannica puts it, “Having never previously been attacked in the war, the city offered increased value for terror bombing against an inexperienced population.” Note the biting words “value for terror”. The peaceful city was so peaceful it was also crammed with refugees. When the USA fire-bombed Tokyo, the bombing was more destructive than either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, and it, too, was the same targeting of innocent civilians. They were burnt alive. It was more destructive even than Dresden.
And since then, the USA has extended its military bases aggressively. It has all these little colonies all over the world. It has about 800 little military outposts. The fortresses of the wild-west, gone into cancerous metastasis.
One such base they colonized, and still colonize, is Diego Garcia.
They had the UK steal it, then they became the receiver of the stolen goods.
Now, after over 50 years of struggle, led often by LALIT and by Chagossians, the USA-UK alliance has finally been exposed at the UN. The International Law has been made clear. It was always true. The ICJ and the UN General Assembly has told the UK to clear out of the whole of Chagos including Diego Garcia, and to do so fast. The only three countries supporting the UK-USA are Israel, Australia and Hungary. It is pitiful.
So, if you are against military bases, you cannot support the MSM Government, which is trying to make a quick buck from selling Diego Garcia to the USA, nor can you support the PMSD-Labour-MMM Opposition, which is opposing the price that Jugnauth is, they guess, asking for, on the grounds that it is not high enough. It needs to be “much more”, as Xavier Duval put it, speaking for the whole of the Opposition.
It is time for you to help build an alternative. We suggest you support LALIT, instead of relying on parties that have already exposed their political bankruptcy.
An important plank on which to judge any political platform, is what it says about the Diego Garcia military base.
LALIT says close it down, clean the area up, set up regional democracy there, and become part of the world movement to close down all foreign military bases, as part of a de-militarizing program for the whole world, including dismantling all nuclear arms.
27 July, 2023.
