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Archive -Seychelles

Opinion - Small nation on the move |23 July 2016

We just have to look through the pages of our newspapers to realise that Seychelles today is a small nation certainly on the move.  Of course, our prayers must be for us to keep on moving in the right direction.  Our newspapers at this time, whether it is Seychelles NATION, Today in Seychelles, Victoria Times or Independent are mostly printed with colour pages and on impressive quality paper with clear indication that a lot of money has been invested in modern and up to date printing machines.

I was further convinced that our small nation is on the move this morning when I glanced through the pages of Today (issue of Thursday July 21, 2016). 

The front page carried two main stories – one about the declaration of our Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Joel Morgan to the National Assembly that “Brexit will have economic rather than diplomatic consequences for Seychelles”.

We are thus getting involved in a controversial UK/Europe dispute far away from our shores but the world today, having become a global village, what takes places in London and Paris soon reverberates in Port Victoria and finds its echoes against the background of the Trois Frères mountains.

The other story on the front page of Thursday’s Today has an interesting and amusing title “We are nobody’s stooges”. This is in fact the declaration of Mr Regis Francourt, leader of the newly formed party “Seychelles Patriotic Movement” (SPM).  “The country is totally polarised” the leader of the new party declared, alluding that he sees himself as a sort of arbitrator who could change the way politics is done in Seychelles. The article names two other members of the SPM Governing Body - one is Vincent Larue as Secretary General and the other is Jerry Rath as Treasurer.  I do not know too much about Mr Larue but I never realised that Jerry Rath, who worked for several months as a security guard at my residence at Glacis-sur-Mer, had much of a political ambition. However, as the saying goes “still water can run very deep” and Mr Rath is certainly an individual on the move. He certainly carries the potential of the “Corporal” who in few months become a “General”.

If we are moving speedily on the ground, Seychelles is also moving even more speedily in the air.

In Today’s second page the headline is about Air Seychelles flying to America. It is an article about our national airline establishing one stop air connection with 6 cities in the United States through its code-sharing arrangements with Etihad Airways.

When I was growing up in Seychelles I recalled we were an isolated nation which was connected with the rest of the world only twice a month by a steam ship plying within Bombay and Mombasa and calling here for some hours while on its way.  Those days Seychelles had earned the reputation of being “A 1000 miles from anywhere”.

As a matter of fact in 1957 my journey from Seychelles to London took me more than 6 weeks. Today we have become an aviation hub in the Western Indian Ocean with modern wide-bodied planes flying in and out several times a day.

Another interesting article in Today’s issue concerns the recent launching of the Patrick Victor Cultural Foundation which inter-alia announced that Mr Victor is about to lead a delegation of Seychellois artists to Mauritius in order to take part in a Festival to do with ‘moutia’, ‘maloya’ and ‘sega tipik’.  If this is of course to reflect Seychellois culture I am duty bound to my own version of Seychelles creole heritage to ask where has the ‘contre dance’, the ‘vals’, the ‘tango’, and the ‘quick steps’ gone? I do recall the days when I accompanied my late brother Mickey and his group “The Buccaneers” to Kenya and Mauritius – all the times singing among other songs “Seychelles un petit pays, ca un petit paradis” and “Le plus beau de tout les tango du monde” of course “Annou viv comment frère, pas necessaire qui nou la guerre”.

Yes, we are a small country on the move but please let us move in the right and proper direction so that none of us is left behind.

 

James R. Mancham

 

 

 

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