A foul-hooked fish, a one-winged butterfly and some tail-wagging dogs
28.09.2024
While people outside LALIT are shocked at Ashok Subron moving from carrying a “BZTD” pancarte in the streets of Port Louis in 2021, meaning “Ni Jugnauth ni Ramgoolam ni Bérenger ni Duval” to literally begging for an alliance with Ramgoolam at Mohith Hall in 2022, most of us in LALIT were not shocked. The reason we weren’t shocked, was that he had already firmly sold out a few months before actually leaving LALIT. That was 20 years ago. That was why he left. He had been foul-hooked already. He was wriggling on a nylon line. When a socialist sells out, sells out that bad, it is once and forever. What he does afterwards is just wriggling. He has wriggled for 20 years now.
He had to wriggle more and more as time went on. And even after the Mohith Hall humiliating spectacle, he was left wriggling for a couple of years more, before announcing two or three tickets from the Ramgoolam-Bérenger-R. Duval alliance. But, he is still wriggling now. Ramgoolam and Bérenger at today’s press conference said they “will” sign an agreement, meaning they haven’t yet. And the journalists, try as they did, could not make Ramgoolam or Bérenger say anything about the third ticket, for Kuggan Parapen, the putative candidate notorious for having accepted a US State Department scholarship to visit the USA, even while Mauritius is illegally militarily occupied by the this same USA. That gives an idea of just how far selling-out sells you out.
So, Subron goes on wriggling. But, his masters go on slowly and inexorably drawing the fishing line in, with him still attached, foul-hooked through the cheek.
He has already publicly written-off his days as a socialist, announcing last Sunday in the Alliance du Changement Triolet meeting from the podium that “Mo byin kontan. Mo santi mwa dan mo fami orizinal!” This climax to a speech, which was the climax of his 20-year selling-out process, performed on stage and in public, live and direct, managed to shock even some of us in LALIT. Talk about being made to cower. Talk about Uriah Heep-ing.
And meanwhile his wriggling goes on. He has managed to get two tickets for Rezistans, one for himself and the other for a candidate he introduces as “le Dr. Thanoo”. He has a lot of “le”, and then changing it to “la” and then back to “le” in his language, as he wriggles. It is a well-documented fact that people French-ify their Kreol more, the more they sell out. And he still has not got a publicly agreed upon program from his new masters! Tickets first, then the wedding alliance, then ... well maybe a program – no doubt it will be vague, weighed down only by the weight of good intentions. You know, the things that pave the way to hell? And Ashok Subron and the other/s will classify themselves by community and will keep a carnet like Kistnen’s with the over-spending of their Alliance noted down. The selling out will be of the struggle against communalism and against capitalism, both. Just as Bérenger did in 1981 when he allied with Boodhoo and issued his “Nouveau Consensus Social” with the capitalist class.
Anyway, from fish caught on hooks, now flaying about on the paving stones of the way to hell, let us move into the air, where there is the butterfly image.
Ashok Subron announces at the Triolet meeting, standing at the microphone wriggling in front of those holding the fishing line he is foul-hooked up on, sitting just behind him, and facing a restless vuvuzela-blowing crowd that a “butterfly” (Rezistans ek Alternativ) can’t fly with only one wing. His image just does not fly at all. RA has got two tickets. Is that not two wings? Already? He should, one might think, be begging for a third one? Or, say, another pair? Or, are his colleagues the wings? And then, what is he? Or are the two wings, the men? Lordy! What is he talking about the butterfly having only one wing?
And now another metaphor, after fish and paving stones, and butterfly wings: the dog and its tail.
Long ago, Jean Claude Bibi, when he was in Lalit de Klas with us, wrote a brilliant article calling the Bizlall-led “Lel Gos” of the MMM at best “the tail wagging towards the left of the dog it was attached to, the MMM, which was moving rightwards fast”. The Lel Gos men – they were all men – were furious, for some reason. In retrospect, the MMM’s movement towards the right would be at the speed of light, from then on. Jean-Claude Bibi predicted that part accurately. The tail ended up wagging to the right, as well, as it turned out, as the Lel Gos turned more nationalist.
More recently, there is yet another metaphor used in politics, world-wide. Not just a tail wagging in one direction. But, since we are already doing mixed metaphors in this light-hearted article, let’s continue on the basis of “in for a penny, in for a pound”. It is “the tail that wags the dog” metaphor! This metaphor means something insignificant and without much known use, a tail, pretending to control something much more powerful, a whole big dog.
As bourgeois democracy reaches its mortal crises at the beginning of the death throes of capitalism, we have quite a few instances of dogs allowing their own tails to wag them, or at least seem to wag them. Mr. Joe Biden pretends that Mr. Netanyahu is a tail that he cannot control. What to do? So, Biden just goes on handing over an extra eight Billion Dollars? To go with the three Billion Dollars annually. Just go on sending bombs. Even as Israel perpetrates the genocide. And Biden pretends it is not his Dollars nor his bombs. Red line, upon red line that Biden announces for Israel. Israel just crosses them, and Biden does nothing except continue arming Israel. Decoded, what does this mean? It means Biden and his men are desperadoes. They are the politically desperate men, so desperate as their empire begins the slow process of crumbling, and then falling. Whatever Netanyahu does, in the final analysis, Biden and Harris and Trump will stand up and applaud, just like all the Congressmen on strings we saw on TV when Netanyahu addressed them. They will applaud their own tail.
And there is a second tail to the same USA dog: Mr. Zelensky. He, too, just wags the USA dog. He was someone who only eight years ago, in 2016, was playing the piano with his penis in witty gigs. He has, though a mere “tail” wagged the dog. He made demands to successive British and American heads of state and heads of government. He got billions of US tax dollars every time he stretched out his begging hand. The USA’s war aims – to surround Russia with NATO countries’ armaments – are satisfied. Mr. Zelensky’s poor people meanwhile, the Ukranians, are killed like so many flies.
And in Mauritius, Ashok Subron is the tail trying to wag a rather big dog made up of the two biggest mainstream bourgeois parties in the country with half of the traditional oligarch’s party, the PMSD – taken together quite a mastiff for a small tail, let alone a butterfly, to wag.
“Wag the dog” has, in American parlance, since President Clinton’s days in power developed a new meaning that we can ponder. It means and I quote “superfluous (military) action in order to distract from domestic scandal.” What scandal is the Alliance du Changement distracting from by means of all this palaver about two or three tickets? No doubt, the notorious Ramgoolam kofor. But, who knows?
To put the cherry on the cake, while we are at it with mixed metaphors and to use Ramgoolam’s metaphor for Rajen Narsinghen’s being an orator at the Triolet meeting, Ashok Subron spoke at a trade union press conference, earlier this week, and while literally batting away elected union presidents live on TV with his hands, and attacking Reeaz Chuttoo’s threat of strike action if the bosses refuse to respect the new Remuneration Orders, he did a stark pantomime of the position he finds himself in. He had a big build-up in his oratory about how he and his associates are the experts at strikes, and how he holds a monopoly on that kind of threat. “Nu isi,” he said, pointing around the table, “nu ki konn fer lagrev.” He flattered himself, pumped himself up, “Si nu pa gayne, si patron pa peye,” then here comes the punch-line, “nu pu fer apel a prosenn guvernman ki pu vini pu pas bann lalwa ki bizin pu pey tu travayer.” So, he, the great expert in strikes, the brave warrior Subron puts out the mortal threat that if the bosses don’t cough up, he will call on the working class to vote for the Ramgoolam-Bérenger alliance he has just joined. The bosses will be terrified by this threat! Then, Subron explains, when the alliance he is part of comes to power, the working class can “fer apel” to it, as the next government, to pass a law that will force the bosses to pay. Plus puissant que ca, tu meurs.
So, at a time when what, in LALIT, we know that what is needed is mobilization behind a proper program to kick out the MSM Alliance from power, and to build a proper working class challenge to capitalist reign at the same time, this kind of political strategy or tactic or whatever it is of Subron’s is pitiful.
LALIT
