The special relationship of James Michel and Wavel Ramkalawan
The Seychellois public was being treated to a rare locally produced telenovela and it was being aired almost daily over both SBC and Telesesel in the past week. This involves the political shenanigans of Wavel Ramkalawan, and his secret friendship with James Michel, who has at last thrown caution to the wind and revealed his true colours going into the 2020 general election. This newspaper has long since raised the alert about the relations between these two who were supposedly political enemies.
The LDS has always promoted itself as the party, which is removing the wool from over the public’s eye and truly the appearance of former SPPF/Parti Lepep diehard Despilly William on the LDS stage at the party’s annual convention, recently and his subsequent declaration has really been a big eye opener for the LDS supporters. Des, put an end to speculations when he announced that James Michel had asked him to pass on his message of 100% support for Ramkalawan and the LDS in the forthcoming elections!
The jubilant reaction of Ramkalawan and co, clearly showed that they already knew about this shocking announcement at their biggest event of the year. Funnily enough in 2015 and 2016, the name James Michel seemed to be an anathema to the LDS supporters as the campaigns were all geared at removing him from State House and even getting him to appear before a court of law!
The reality that followed the LDS win in the legislative elections of 2016 was a far cry from the original battle cry. Michel did not even appear before the Finance and Public Accounts Committee (FPAC) of the National Assembly, to answer questions pertaining to the FIU, the Irish, and other incidents, which took place during his mandates, despite the LDS majority in the National Assembly. Worse still, he retained his immunity from prosecution as LDS allowed time to pass without moving for any legal action against him. At the very last minute before his immunity came into force, they pretended to bring a motion to change that part of the Constitution when they knew that this would not pass. And they didn’t follow it up with a case in court against Michel before the three years of his immunity was up; even with an army of lawyers on their side.
Now that it is election time and the topic of Michel and his role as facilitator to Arab funding has been making the rounds in most conversations on the island and the eventual declaration by DES, recently, was just like a ribbon cutting ceremony… it was already a fait accompli!
Amazingly, enough of the crowd, which had been condemning Michel for years and even those who labelled him as a traitor, suddenly found it in their hearts to forgive the man and welcome him among the fold of LDS supporters. While Des really threw the cat in amongst the pigeon, LDS and Michel went on a damage control expedition to minimize the adverse political impact on Ramakalwan’s chances at the poll. Des stood his ground with the full backing of his children who had witnessed the conversation between their famous father and James Michel. They backed their father up on social media. At a loss as to what to do, Ramkalawan finally decided to throw dirt in the face of his own support base and said he welcomes Michel support as James Michel is also a child of Seychelles and LDS is running in these elections under the theme-Seychelles for all her children!This newspaper is of the view that Ramkalawan and Michel spoke on the morning of the LDS convention and we believe that it was during that conversation that a plan was concocted to make public their special relationship. It was also done to negate popular belief that Michel was support-ing Ste Ange. And that James Michel sympathizers should now vote for Ramkalawan. Despilly William was just a pawn within the grand scheme of manipulating the minds of the masses. Strange bedfellows indeed!
