Wavel Ramkalawan is deadly wrong |01 February 2018

I write this article in response to and on behalf of concerned citizens specially those who have suffered during the Coup D’état and the period that followed until President Faure became President on October 16, 2016. Our web site www.seychellestruthreconciliation.sc and our phones have been inundated with calls since Wavel Ramkalawan gave his interview on SBC (in the newly created programme Tête-à-tête aired on January 22) and announced his idea of how the Truth and Reconciliation process should proceed.  People are saying “Wavel has gone mad” and his idea will lead us into chaos and an unsatisfactory resolution to this delicate matter. They say clearly Wavel has not done any homework and he is copying what other countries have done and taking us down the same precipice.To be fair to Wavel we must admire his relentless quest to be the President of Seychelles, a feat that has eluded him so many times and yet the man keeps pushing the mountain and not giving up. In the words of Kelly Rowland “Never give up your dream because you never know what the Lord can bless you with”. We also recognise Wavel has great stamina because he has been fighting for a number of years, the evils of the last 40 years of one party state and autocratic previous regimes.

There is however one matter he has got wrong because he has not done any research or read the report we provided him with a copy. Wavel is proposing a dangerous path that is fraught with failures and instead of achieving closure we will end up with an absolute mess that other countries have suffered and yet he is not prepared to learn from other countries’ mistakes. I delivered a presentation to members of the National Assembly Committee on Truth and Reconciliation yet they are not challenging Wavel as to why he is leading them and us into this dangerous path towards disaster that so many countries have undertaken to their peril. Are these Committee Members just following Wavel like the piped piper and can’t they fathom out that Wavel’s approach is impractical and will fail? Surely even though he is Chairman of this Committee, the Committee members have the right to question his motives, yes?

Wavel said in his SBC interview that the National Assembly is waiting for the Truth and Reconciliation Act, currently being prepared by the Attorney General’s Office, to be received and passed by the National Assembly then names will be proposed (by whom, he doesn’t say?) to the Constitutional Appointment Authority (CAA) for the CAA to appoint a 7-member Truth and Reconciliation Committee which will then go to President Faure for the final seal of approval before the Act becomes law. This has got to be one of Wavel’s worst proposals and I do not believe he can come on national TV and make such a careless statement. He is clearly not taking any notice of the hard work done by others in this area and he is behaving like a bull in a China shop and bulldozing his way into a now defunct way of doing things because he just wants to copy what other countries have done. For the love of God why do we do things in this way? Has the CAA got the knowledge to choose 7 people proposed to them? Does the CAA know the right background needed to form an organisation to handle such a Project? Has the CAA done any research to know what kind of people need to be appointed or recruited or is it as long as they are buddies of so and so they will be appointed? This is the death of depravation we are prepared to indulge in to save the skin of a few buddies. Come on father Wavel, please regain your faculties, you are leading us down the devil’s path.

As soon as the programme on SBC was over our web site was deluged with activities and our phones started to ring with callers asking if Wavel had gone mad...

…They point to South Africa, which was widely publicised because of Apartheid and Mandela, nothing else, where to this day they have not resolved some of the issues and they wonder why is Wavel taking us down that same road to failure?

Seychelles Truth Reconciliation and Peace Platform (STRPP) is an independent and registered NGO, we answer to no political pressure and we were founded specifically to undertake the research, implementation and finalisation of the Truth and Reconciliation process in Seychelles. STRPP have spent 2 years researching into 51 countries to find out where they went wrong and what they got right so that we do not go down that same path of failure. STRPP is in continuous contact with some of the sufferers who attended our two public seminars and we are trying to keep the lid on this delicate matter because some of them have threatened to hold a demonstration in Victoria which will be bad for our tourism industry. Now Wavel comes up with this ridiculous approach that is used to appoint members to the Board of SBC or Seypec or STC and other parastatals and he wants to use this method to appoint the experts needed to run a Truth and Reconciliation organisation, which is chalk and cheese.

We strongly advise Wavel to please read our report which he has a copy and so has President Faure, the Judiciary, Speaker of the National Assembly, Attorney General’s office and several leading members of our society.  The main reason for failure in nearly every country we researched was a political cover up by either the outgoing President who tried to cover up his/her atrocities before he/she stood down or the incoming President who was not prepared to take the blame of his/her predecessor’s atrocities and in every case millions of dollars of the people’s money mysteriously went missing and mass graves were discovered. In every country a Committee was formed made up of buddies who either destroyed the evidence or made sure the truth was not told and sometimes they even held fake hearings by hand-picked judges who declared the guilty innocent. We do not want this farce and shenanigans in Seychelles, Mr Ramkalawan. 

We have to question Wavel’s motives for taking us down this path where so many have trod and have failed. Is it really because he has not done his homework or right now he has too much on his plate and he doesn’t know which bone to chew on next but please Mr Ramkalawan if you cannot handle it leave it to others who have worked very hard to arrive at a process that is suitable for Seychelles based on in-depth research at no cost the tax payers. Let us not jump into something that has failed when we have overwhelming evidence that this is not the way to do it, so why do you see that we should follow in the path towards failure? This peaceful nation was robbed of its infancy and virginity by a handful of greedy politicians most of whom are dying and they will pay the price for their crimes in the after-life, because what we are looking for is the truth so that those who have suffered can achieve closure therefore there is no need to appoint 7 wise men/women into a “Committee wielding a fake big stick” to protect those who have committed the atrocities because this process requires a structure of people from different background and professions and no retribution or apportion of blame nor any finger pointing is intended, just truth and the matter will be closed.

I am surprised that the Attorney General has not consulted with STRPP so far which means the Act is being written the way the politicians want it, in which case it will be rejected by the civil society and it will be a waste of tax payers money but this is the way we do things in Seychelles, we get it wrong first then we go back and correct our mistakes. STRPP should have been consulted because the politicians have been consulted therefore I smell a rat here. This delicate process must be undertaken by an organisation not a Committee of 7 gurus because of the vast amount of work variation which includes social dismemberment re-alignment, behavioural and physiological re-adaptation, induced mental disorders and conditions, psychological disorders and behavioural problems, loss of possessions and property, violation of Articles 1 to 30 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Charter, loss of family members counselling, stress meta-analysis and post-traumatic stress disorders and the list goes on which a 7 member Committee, no matter who they are, cannot effectively do justice to this subject and bring about closure to those who have suffered and are still suffering.

This is no time to play games because the sufferers have waited long enough and creating a micky mouse Committee to try and save the skin of fellow buddies is not now necessary, so please let us move forward and create a structure that will be effective from day one. Our team is not complete yet, by any means, therefore we would welcome any nomination of anyone who believes he/she can add to the success of this process.  We have published our Head Count Plan, Operational budgets for 5 years, Constitution, Code of Conduct, Modus Operandi and Implementation Plan all of which can be found on our web site www.seychellestruthreconciliation.sc. STRPP was specifically founded to handle this project and not for anything else, we did so because we wanted this process to be politically unbiased.  So father Wavel we pray the Lord will guide you to turn round from the destructive path you are leading us into and if we take the alternative path as proposed in our report, where all parties have a role to play to find the truth, achieve peace, harmony and reconciliation, because we have suffered long enough and now let us engage in achieving a successful closure.

Contributed by:

Barry Laine (FCIM, FInst SMM, MCMI, MBSCH)

Seychelles Truth Reconciliation and Peace Platform (STRPP)

Disclaimer:

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Seychelles NATION newspaper.