07.07.2007
AS FROM TODAY MAURITIUS MEDIA AT A GLANCE WRITTEN BY RAM SEEGOBIN WILL BE OCCASIONALLY POSTED ON THIS WEBSITE. CHECK IT OUT!
Friday 6 July, a rare occurrence: Jacques Rivet, the Director of the Le Mauricien group, has written a signed little article to denounce what he calls the unfounded information published in the 16 June edition of "La Lettre de l'Ocean Indien" published in Paris. At the same time he makes hardly veiled legal threats against an unnamed local weekly paper, which is probably "La Voix Creole" which had taken up the allegations in its 6 July edition, adding a few juicy bits.
Jacques Rivet, as Director, very rarely writes anything in his own newspaper, perhaps once every 17 years or so, when there is a very very serious problem. So we can assume that the information published in the Paris paper and taken up in the local weekly is very serious indeed.
In fact we had noticed that the editorial line of the Le Mauricien paper had become unusually strange recently, the main editorials being a whole series of articles about the possibility of building a city around a race-course! Serious attacks and threats against the newspaper by the Prime Minister had gone without reply, with the usual venom of the editorial writer being saved for a silly polemic about a sporting issue with the L'Express paper. Clearly the Le Mauricien Group is in the middle of a politico-financial storm which is as unpredictable as it is serious.
Something totally different: have you noticed that recently the mainstream newspapers have started referring to the Sugar Barons as "les sucriers", presumably to avoid being seen as being "anti sugar bosses". As the new term "les sucriers" sounded rather odd, we looked up the dictionary meaning of "sucrier": "Recipient ou l'on met le sucre". So next time you read that Ministers have had a meeting with some "sucriers", you can imagine a row of ministers sitting across the table from a row of pots of sugar, with a tea spoon sticking out of the left ear.
RS