Having delivered a lacklustre speech advising on the floatation of the rupee, the President was off to La Digue to do another touch based with the grassroots community. Orderly, has witnessed such a rainstorm of rupees on the State House lawns that he is scared this flotation exercise will backfire! Instead of facing the harsh realities of this latest macro-economic exercise, the President is off on another little trip…
President: Good Morning Orderly! We now have to go out and preach the message of unity. Now that Obama has won the election in America, we stand a very good chance of getting some reprieve from this IMF program.
Orderly: Sir it is indeed a magnanimous victory. He now has a major task of fixing the ailing economy and getting out of those unwanted conflicts.
President: Indeed Orderly, a very similar mandate to what I have. The message is now to get everyone on board to help us redress this ship. As otherwise, there will be a lot of unwanted conflicts. We do not want our people to turn against us do we? We promised not to devalue and now we have floated…
Orderly: Yes Sir! There has been a lot of confusion as this rupee floatation has taken everything with it. ‘Les prix flambent’! There is a serious call for all those with fat accounts overseas to bring the money back. The Chairman of the SCCI is right. There has been too much of the siphoning off of funds and there is a long list of white elephants that has just wasted our resources.
President: No Orderly, all those white elephants are turning into hotel gems. On my recent trip to La Digue I did say that everyone should have the right to earn a bit of forex from our tourism industry. Mancham was right all along. You’ve got to put the dollars in the people’s pockets…
Orderly: Indeed Sir, if we had listened then instead of ridiculing the poor guy. He means well. I am still chagrined by the fact that we could not make him an ambassador. Perhaps we would have not gone to IMF if we were not a bit too stubborn. It would have never been possible to achieve the Strategy 2017 in this kind of situation. We were perhaps a bit too ambitious.
President: The message will get across Orderly, don’t you worry. The folks on La Digue were delighted to see me. As you know, Praslin is my island but now that boss has stepped back, I need to step in to show our most loyal supporters that we are with them in this struggle and pretty soon the economy will be robust again. But we need to make sacrifices.
Orderly: It is indeed great to see this small island flourishing in all its aspects. Tourism and agriculture is well integrated on La Digue and it was also nice to pay a visit to those talented craftsmen.
President: La Digue will be the model of our economic recovery under the IMF Orderly. It needs to be implemented on a macro level and it suits the island perfectly. We will soon be giving them their own petrol station to bring them into the modern age.
Orderly: Sir but apparently one of those with a big fat bank account overseas is known as the king there. Did you get the chance to meet him? We should tell him to bring back some of this fortune into the country as we are building from ground zero, remember?
President: No Orderly, I kept well away from this guy. I don’t need a punch in the face. I still need my good features to appear on TV. I love television Orderly, if that guy from the Maldives does not feature me more often on the box. I will replace him with my very own Uncle Tom. I will also send him to La Digue to get punched by the King as punishment.
Orderly: Maybe we can send Boss to La Digue, Sir, to get punched by this guy as punishment for landing us in this mess. And we can make this guy torture him by reading nursery rhyme to him every night before bed time.
President: Good idea Orderly - Enough about punishment now. I am very encouraged to see how those Diguois are using this opportunity of an open economy to integrate and build upon what they have achieved. You will see how strong and robust when we come back.
Orderly: Yes Sir. This is what resilience is all about!
Mr. President ends the briefing by attending to all the new legislations that require his signature before being passed by the National Assembly. Desperate times calls for desperate measures. Resilience and a robust economy is what we need in these hard times of the floatation of the rupee. We have to be united, young and old in this new struggle to help us keep afloat…
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