Do not blame everything On Covid-19
This is a strong message from Seychelles Civil Society (SCS) whose members are sending out to politicians and anyone else looking for our votes for the 2020 Presidential and National Assembly elections. These events could not have come at a better time for the people of Seychelles, the first nation of these islands, we call Seychelles and the indigenous inhabitants we refer to as Seychellois, a very proud but poor nation. Why are we poor? Is there a good reason why 40+% of our nation live below the poverty line? The answer is yes there is a good reason, we have been asleep while those in power have helped themselves to our wealth and the distribution of our resources have been very unfair, our laws have been interpreted incorrectly and in a bias manner to favour those in power. Well Covid or not Covid the time for change has arrived.
What can we blame Covid-19 for?
We have suffered a Coup D’état at the point of the gun, rapped, imprisoned without trials, made to disappear into thin air, we have been trodden on, walked all over and we have been lied to, our land and property have been stolen from right under our noses and when we complain or try to use our legal system for justice, those in power pull the strings and we come across protectionism, favouritism, malediction-ism, imprecation-ism, in Creole we can add “mansonz”, kalomni” and “manboulouk” when all we are trying to do is put food on our table as a nation and our legal system fails us. This was and still is the true state of our nation before and during Covid-19 and the situation will not improve until radical changes take place in our society.
So please do not blame Covid-19 for all our ills because we were declining fast with no inward investments because we have people employed to bring investments into Seychelles who are not qualified in sales and marketing.
Then our Central Bank stepped in to warn us that we are eating into our small reserve and insinuate to us that we must elect people who will get us out of this mess. Well before this pandemic situation, we hardly heard from our Central Bank, now they are in our face on TV regularly, putting fear into us. Perhaps they should consider that the world debt is today US$ 253 Trillion and the world is running a Debt-to-GDP ratio of 322%. The European Union’s debt, where we get a grant or two, is US$ 29 Trillion, USA US$ 18 Trillion, UK US$ 8 Trillion, France US$ 5 Trillion and our Central Bank is scaring the hell out of us because we are eating into our small reserve? Come on get real and get things into perspective for goodness sake. If Albert Rene had not plunged Seychelles into debt to build the highways, the airport and the various ‘comblage’, today we would not be able to afford these developments, we would still be driving passed the abandoned cars on the roadside in Cascade, which have been there for years and Cascade has not changed for 50 years, despite the leader of Government Business being its MNA.
Do you want our votes?
The number of banners will not win you votes. If you want us to vote for you either as our next President or as a member of our next National Assembly tell us how you are going to get us out of the mess we are in today then tell us how you are going to handle Covid-19 and how you are going to ensure every Seychellois earns a minimum of RS 12,000 a month and we stop paying senior civil servants millions a year. It is a disgrace when one person earns 10 times more than another, which shows how capitalism has made some people greedy and the more they have the more they want.
Who in Seychelles have any experience of taking a nation through a recession or out of a pandemic? Give me a name, who has done anything to lift Seychelles out of poverty without first filling his pocket? Give me a name? Come on be honest or get down on your knees and pray for forgiveness because you are lying to yourself. There is no one from our current government who is qualified in sales and marketing and who can prove that they can market Seychelles to the outside world successfully and sell fridges to Eskimos and blankets to Seychellois, so to speak. Without a marketing man at the head of the team we will not make it because good marketing is at the centre of any successful business.
Our only saviour is a team of well qualified technocrats with experienced sales and marketing leadership who are not interested in pillaging our resources and acquiring wealth but want to put Seychelles at the top of the “doing well index” and not lie to us and tell us we are a “high income country”. High income for the senior civil servants who are grossly overpaid but not to the average Seychellois trying to put food on the table.
What are you going to do about Covid-19?
No one knows for sure where and how the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) COV–2 came from and there are 6 species of human infectious coronaviruses known to date and one is sub-divided into different strains making all together 7 human infectious coronaviruses. Where did they all come from, we do not know for sure and the politicians are blaming it on transmission from the bats in China. We are not being told the truth because America, UK, Canada, Russia, several countries in the European Union and lately China are all working on biological warfare, which is a quick way of killing people without purchasing expensive guns and bombs, which leave behind evidence.
There is a big espionage market in chemical warfare substances that UK, America, Russia and China are competing for alongside developing hardware based weapons which they sell to developing countries to be used by indigenous people to fight each other to death and wipe out a whole nation as long as these major countries continue to make money selling their killing machines, bombs and chemical concoctions to annihilate fellow mankind. We will not have peace on Earth unless Mother Nature takes it upon itself and sends something like SARS to teach mankind a lesson. This has nothing to do with religions, you are free to follow your beliefs and to practice your faith as part of your inalienable human rights and we must not forget that the LGBT community also have their inalienable human rights to practice and satisfy their sexual urges in any way as anyone one else on this planet, including humans, animals, plants, and insects.
What do we do during a recession and pandemic?
I have lived and worked through several global recessions in the UK in 1975, 1982, 1991 and 2009. There is no need to panic, all we have to do is apply basic management techniques to shape up, clean up, get rid of dead wood, renew the structure, get rid of the bad apples, revamp the product line, look for new customers and prepare a new business plan. There has been a recession more of less every 10 years for whatever reasons and each time you make sure you retrain your staff, you prepare a new brochure, you look at ways to cut production costs and you emerge leaner and fitter as a business or as a nation. All we have to do now is elect a first class smart team, it does not matter which political party they belong to because politics has made most of us very poor and a few of us very rich. Remember the marketing man in our team will lead us to success and prosperity, while the other technocrats will ensure we all receive a fair wage and laws are obeyed.
Contributed by:
Barry Laine FCIM, FInst SMM, MCMI, MBSCH
Seychelles Civil Society
The Wishing Well
Anse Des Genets
Mahe, Seychelles
Email: barrylaine@hpcgroup.sc
