WHERE IS OUR MONEY??

The bleeding of Air Seychelles

There has been a lot of debate following our recent articles on Air Seychelles. There seems to be some ‘agents’ adamant in spreading confusion about how a parastatal company should be run. Even to the point of advocating that it is the sole prerogative of the President to decide what to do as he has the ‘mandate’!!

We will be starting a series of articles under the headline “Where is our money?” to put the spotlight on all the white elephants, failed experiments, spillage & wastage that helped bury this country into the deep financial hole that it finds itself in today. But do our leaders have the humility to look back on the past blunders to try and do better? On the contrary, judging from the series of howlers that this current administration champions, we are following a path of arrogant self fulfilment - led by a ‘Pathetic Man of the People’.

It is high time we educate our people that a government, headed by an executive body is responsible its people, the taxpayers. It is the taxpayers who are ultimately the rightful collective ‘owners’ of this country with all its assets. So it is a god given right for them to seek answers to questions. It is their fundamental right under our constitution to demand that the elected office bearers are held accountable. Clean government is not one that has a modus operandi modelled on ‘manboulouk’ deals. He wanted to be judged by his actions and this is a far cry from the transparency, accountability and good government that was promised. Our current ‘leader’ and his bunch of ‘yes men’ are solely motivated by greed, backed by a massive propaganda machine that is in overdrive to mask all their incompetence. We are being fed daily doses of hot air. Big words, borrowed jargons, ‘creolised’ English words to sound pompous! And yet very little substance!

Let’s take for instance the case of the monsters called ‘parastatals’ created during the dictatorial one-party era. Today, they are being kept on life support just to please a chosen few. They are bleeding to death as they burn huge holes in the pockets of us taxpayers. Air Seychelles, IDC, Seypec, SMB/STC have all been under the microscope recently. Audits were supposed to be carried out but we have yet to see the results of such findings. Is it because the time is still not right to privatise them? No big fish has stepped in yet with cases of dollars to line the pockets of those at the top?

Here is a case in point. Last year there was a lot of hoo-ha in the national assembly over a Sr. 30 odd million bailout plan for Air Seychelles. We were told our national airline was bankrupt and needed protection. Today we see a massive building at the airport about to open its doors that has cost the airline almost the same amount that was sought for the bailout! They are really taking all of us for fools these soi-disant ‘brainiacs’ who have been entrusted to run the affairs of this country. That’s precisely what you get from communist-trained economists who have become ‘plus royalist que le roi’…

Until when are we going to continue taking all this lying down?

 The new Air Seychelles building that cost the taxpayers a 'bailout' plan late last year, while the airline is on life support...