Genocide Blog 56- Nomination Day during a Genocide
23.10.2024
It was Nomination day yesterday. LALIT is presenting six candidates – three in Port Louis No. 1 and three in the South in No. 13, Rivieres des Anguilles and Souillac. And so, we were at the Nomination Centres – in those two areas, protesting against the ethno-religious classification required by law by having drawn lots for our so-called “community” – and I was, in the afternoon, in team of six LALIT members, doing door-knocking in Pailles. And as we were doing this electoral work of two kinds – formal registration of our candidates and campaigning in neighbourhoods – at the same time Israel, supported as ever by the USA, worsens its genocide in Northern Gaza. It tightens the noose on food supplies, strangles medical and energy flows, and bombs whole families to smithereens, burning children alive, including 19 year-old Sha’ban al-Dalou, a software engineering student, already injured, already with a drip inserted into his hand, burnt alive on our screens. Often people being bombed and burnt alive are already displaced into tents. Their now meagre means of survival already gone. Israel and the USA continue to herd people around, as if they were animals. And so when I see a fine layer of dust on my floors or on a window ledge, and worry about being a slutty housekeeper, I remember the Palestinian woman going into the remains of her dust-covered bombed-out house. And I feel shame at not doing enough to stop the genocide against the Palestinians.
And because we, as the people of the world, could not stop and cannot stop the Israel-USA alliance from slaughtering the aged, the men, the children, the sick, the infirm, the women, the newborns in Palestine, now this maniacal, murderous alliance of Israel and the USA broadens its genocide into the West Bank and now the Lebanon, too. It is truly unthinkable. The Israeli-US barbarians go on and on, torturing civilians. And they already secretly plan to attack Iran, as leaks have clearly shown. And together the USA and Israel worsen the massacres. They have to be stopped. Humanity’s future is at stake.
And meanwhile, our LALIT member who volunteered to help Palestinian families face up to this spreading genocide against them, is right now trying to find her way back home to us in Mauritius. Yes, it is hard to get into Palestine, hard to be there, and also hard to get out again back home. So, these two aspects of political struggle – in Mauritius the elections, and in Palestine against the genocide – intertwine. She will present a “report back” when she gets home. First one to LALIT members, then to the public.
And as the two elections approach – in the USA, the perpetrator of the genocide alongside Israel, and in Mauritius – we compare the choices people are given. In the USA, electors “main” choice is the deranged Trump, that dangerous man, who should not be in a position of power at all, and a woman who is responsible as Vice President of the USA for perpetrating a genocide, and for all the massacre, starvation, political cover-up, abuse of the UN veto, as well as any number of war crimes, crimes against humanity, including genocide. What kind of a choice does the capitalists’ system of democracy offer Americans? And in Mauritius, we have two main alliances, those in power around the Jugnauth and the MSM, with a record of using political power for economic gain and for abuse of state institutions of all kind, and those in Opposition around the Ramgoolam and the Labour Party, with its record of the same kind of abuse, as well as the vivid memory of the videos of the dollar bills, in series, cascading out of his safe at his home. And both alliances in favour of the USA’s military base remaining as military occupation of our land – arguing only about amounts of payment, and issue of “form”. Neither campaigns for actions to stop the genocide. Neither campaigns on an end to selling off land, often arable land, to billionaires from abroad. Neither campaigns for forcing the big sugar estates to allocate land for food security. Both alliances use and abuse ethno-religious signals in a dangerous way. And both stand accused of phone-tapping, even getting into WhatsApp applications, and of reproducing these illegal audio-recordings by “Missie Moustass” in the form of tele-drama serials, on first Facebook, which took them down, and then Tik-Tok which took them down. And the Police Commissioner, exposed by the audio-recordings, and already long overdue for being removed from office, is the one in charge of getting to the bottom of this. Many blame Israel, or Israeli companies, for the breaches of communications.
So, in LALIT, how do we link these two levels of reality – an ongoing genocide for which we are all, as human beings, responsible, and the political situation? Well, we do it in our Press briefings outside the Nomination Centre, by addressing national issues, as well as international, to attack those in power and seeking power without programs at all.
To conclude, I will give a feel of what it was like on the campaign trail in Pailles at Cite Mauvillac, where I was yesterday afternoon with five other LALIT members.
As we walked up one lane, in two groups of three, and were leaving a leaflet, after a short introduction, with an old man, I asked if I was right in remembering he was a dock worker. He said, “Yes, I know you from the 1979 strike, when the dockers were with the sugar cane labourers. And I know You’re your husband. How’s he doing?” And we shared memories then, for five minutes, of the most intense nation-wide general strike movement. The conversation was an immense pleasure to me, and I could see the joy in the eyes of the dock worker as he reminisced of the times of hope in the struggle, times that will be back one day. And then he asked about our candidates for the constituency, so I introduced him to the two who were in the team with us. He was thrilled they were working people, one in construction, Laval Yves, a woman bus conductor, Sarajane Naraina, and an IT technician, Rada Kistnasamy.
Then, one of our six members in the door-knocking called Georges found that three electors he met there knew him personally from when he was driver of the Municipal Biblio-bus in the area and said they had borrowed books from his bus. So, he introduced our 12-Point Platform for the elections, this way. Again, I sensed the warmth in this shared memory.
Another LALIT member, Anne-Marie knew two women who travel on the same Pailles bus often, and had struck up conversation with them in the past. Their conversation on politics progressed from this point on in that joyful spirit of shared experience. I met a woman I knew from the women’s movement.
LALIT candidate Laval Yves was over-joyed to meet a construction worker he had worked alongside for General Construction on two different sites, years ago. I witnessed the warmth in the conversation that followed. No other political party has this kind of implantation within the broad masses of the people.
Candidate for the constituency Rada Kistnasamy met someone who had learnt to read and write recently in a course at the building where LALIT’s headquarters are. Almost everyone, we realize, knows our headquarters. Rada is an IT technician, and we met an elector who is in IT Security – so we shared, in a serious moment, some talk about the recent leaks of phone-tapped conversations – the ongoing scandal and revelations that the Press and profit-making radio-TV outfits as well as other parties are so keen to titillate people with, grave as all the issues involved are: data theft and hoarding, .
And almost everyone we spoke to, we asked if they were following the bombing and starvation of the Palestinian people, and they all that I heard, except for one, said “Yes”, and they believed the killing should stop at once. We explained how that is the first point on our 12-point Platform, and that one of our members is on the way home after volunteering to help families suffering the US-Israeli genocide. This introduces our unique linking of practical work and our program.
So, we live through the genocide happening on our screens before our eyes, and we do not turn our heads away, and just concentrate on “getting votes” – but instead link the political aspect of a vote to world events and to nation-wide events, as well as problems of the neighbourhood.
And I ignore the films of dust on my floors.
Lindsey Collen
for LALIT.
