No, the government is not trying to steal your money...

It’s only been a week since Bramer Bank closed and the Mauritian social media is already abuzz with the most outlandish of rumors. Some people claimed the government is nationalizing the banking industry, others that it’s purely a political vendetta. When the 24000 clients with the “Super Cash Back Gold” policy were told they weren’t guaranteed to get their money back, even more speculation arose.

The reality of the situation is that there is no government conspiracy to make the BAI fail and “Super Cash Back Gold” was never a legitimate insurance product.

Bramer Bank has been insolvent for a long time

If you think that the BAI and the Bramer Bank’s troubles started in December 2014, you probably have not read the 2007 report from the International Monetary Fund which ends with this conclusion about the BAI : “the company may suffer a liquidity crisis.”

This is what the IMF said about BAI: :”a notable development in the insurance market was the significant expansion between 2002 and 2004 of investments in related companies by a leading life insurer (BAI), putting policy holder reserves at risk.”

This is how the IMF in 2007, qualified the BAI’s decision to purchase real estate assets: “[they are] raising the level of potentially illiquid and difficult-to-value assets to a staggering level of 59 %”.

Their conclusions are even more damning for the Bramer Bank, which according to the IMF should not even have received a banking license: “rather disconcertingly, despite its adoption of unsound investment principles, this financial group was granted approval in principle in late 2006 to obtain a license under the Banking Act by the Bank of Mauritius, without any consultation between the BOM and FSC.”

The IMF wasn’t the only institution to notice suspicious activity. The FSC has been investigating BAI since 2012 despite, according to the ex-president of the FSC, a political unwillingness to act.

Government conspiracy accusations

The current government has been accused of not only failing to intervene to prevent the collapse, but also causing it by removing 1.5 billion rupees from the bank.

In this interview, the BOM director explains at length all the past and current administrations’ efforts to keep Bramer from collapsing. It turns out that the government has been continuously injecting money into Bramer to keep it afloat since last year and the bank still didn’t recover. In fact, its situation just got worse.

Did you really want the government pension fund to remain in the same bank that the IMF says should not even have received a license in the first place?

However, the government didn’t abandon Bramer Bank. It left its two additional billions in the bank. When the BAI asked for an emergency loan of 3.5 billions, the BOM offered to lend BAI the money if they could come up with 350 millions by March 31st, which they failed to do. By this point, BAI had exhausted all its government securities, the only collateral the BOM can legally accept.

To what extent are we obligated to support a failing private company? How can you demand that the government continue to inject billions in a company that has clearly shown itself to be irresponsible?

“Super Cash Back Gold” policies

When the government decided to take over most of the insurance policies of the BAI, there was understandable outrage from people whose policies were left out. After all, a lot of them invested their entire lives’ earnings and it was an immense shock for them to learn that they might lose it all. It’s a horrible thing for anyone to have to face.

Some people started to feel that the government was purposefully discriminating against them. They failed to understand what set their policies apart and why the government was taking over.

The most important thing to understand is that it is dubious BAI is capable of repaying its clients, no matter what kind of policy they bought. Read the previous section, if you don’t believe it. Without some kind of intervention, everyone would have lost their money.

The government doesn’t have a magical reserve of money to simply assume all of BAI liabilities. It cannot simply pay everyone the value of their policies as much as we would like that to be the case.

Usually, in an insurance policy, a policy holder pays a monthly amount over time in exchange for a sum the insurer dispenses when pre-agreed criteria are met. These are the ones the government are taking over because these policies still generate a steady revenue stream. These policies are less of a burden to bail out because people are still paying their monthly premiums.

In “Super Cash Back Gold”, the clients have put in large lump sums beforehand and get interest at fixed time intervals based on that money. This would be fine if  BAI hadn’t lost all that money in risky investments. It would be too costly for the government to take over that particular policy as they would have to pay out the entire sum the policy holders have put in.

If you want your money back and BAI cannot refund it, get together and sue BAI and its subsidiaries. The government can do many things, but giving you back that money is not only impossible but also sets an incredibly bad precedent. People would be able to start Ponzi schemes and get away with not having to repay any of it because the government would be easily pressured into using taxpayer money to do it.

The other issue is whether there was a Ponzi or not.

That is much more unclear. But what we do know is that the BAI was offering suspiciously far above market interest rates of 5.75 to 12%. For comparison, MCB offers 3.15% on savings accounts and SBM offers 3.45% on short term deposits and 4% on long term deposits. The Prime Minister even mentioned a policy where you received the interest upfront.

In the long term, had the company failed, and we have many reason to believe it was going to imminently, that money would have been lost and the results would have been equivalent to a Ponzi, whether it started out as one or not. Taking into consideration the news that Rawat transferred 500 millions to the Bahamas and that the company bought a castle worth 250 millions in Rome, I don’t see how the government was in the wrong in assuming control of the Bramer Bank.

That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t be upset, they have every right to be. They should however be asking the right questions, such as how did the BAI manage to get (and retain) a license for the Bramer Bank in 2006 when the IMF itself recommended against it?  

They should also make sure that their anger is targeted at the right people, for example, a certain ex-BOM director who has been suspiciously quiet lately...

Gay people and Rain in Mauritius

If you're wondering what gay people have to do with the Mauritian weather, let me give you a brief summary of events.

This past week, a Mauritian gay rights organization launched a campaign to promote LGBT rights and ask for the legalisation of sodomy (Currently illegal in Mauritius, even for consenting adults). The next day, there were heavy rains in Mauritius, which, it being a tropical island, happens often. And yet, a significant number of Mauritians began to claim that the torrential rains were god's way of indicating how displeased he was with both the group's demands and the Mauritian population for letting them demand it at all.

Now, generally, I would just chalk it up to general stupidity, even the US has a few nutjobs who bring up this sort of thing from time to time. But these aren't isolated nutjobs and there are far too many of them. This isn't the first time this happened either. On the 30th March 2013, severe rains caused the death of 11 people. Soon after that, some people claimed that this was god's way of punishing the country, because that week, gay tourists had held a wedding reception there. And a lot of Mauritians thought that was a perfectly rational explanation. 

I expected that notion to die quickly, but not only do I see more and more people on Facebook saying that, they now blame gay people each time something bad happens. And each time, there's an article on gay rights, they bring up the 2013 flood as proof that LGBT rights are a bad thing and will doom the country.

If you're one of those Mauritians, allow me to explain why that's a batshit crazy idea to have.

I could attempt to use logic and explain that February and March are the wettest months and that it's climate change and lack of proper drainage facilities that cause floods but I don't think that rationality is going to convince you that god won't send heavy rain and kill people if you make anal sex legal. But if you truly believe that eliminating this law will cause so much damage, then surely it follows that you also believe that legalizing gay marriage would be catastrophic. 

By your logic, countries with legal gay marriage should be suffering the most. If god sent floods to Mauritius just because a small group of people called for the decriminalization of sodomy and killed 11 people because of a gay wedding reception, surely he must be doing far worse things to countries where gay couples get married everyday. And he must be most pleased with the countries that punish homosexuality the most harshly. 

Here are the 18 countries which have legal gay marriage (Not inclusive of those with civil unions or countries like the US which partially allow it): Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina, Denmark, France, Brazil, Uruguay, New Zealand, Britain, Luxembourg and Finland.

Here are the 10 countries where you can be killed for being gay: Yemen, Iraq, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan and the U.A.E.

I could just ask you to look at the countries and figure out which ones are worse off, but I'm going to give you some more facts. This is a 2013 report on world happiness. These are the top 5 countries for the happiest citizens: Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, Netherlands and Sweden. 4 of them have legal gay marriage and Switzerland allows registered partnerships. 

The Netherlands have had gay marriage since 2001 and legalized same-sex relations in 1811. They were the first country to legalize gay marriage 14 years ago and in 2013, they were the fourth happiest country in the world. If god is punishing them, he's doing a pretty bad job of it.

This is a 2014 report of the world's worst human right abusers. I don't think that it would surprise you to learn that Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Yemen are in the list of countries that have the worst reputations for human rights. Mauritania is equally shitty and Saudi Arabia regularly violates human rights.  

Does it still seem to you that your god is in the business of punishing countries who give gay people rights? 

Do you still think that god caused floods the day after the campaign was launched? 

If he was trying to express his displeasure, it seems that he missed his target by a day. Why couldn't he be more explicit and send it the same day? 

And if you think that your god is the one who sent the rains that in 2013, caused the death of 11 people, you should probably reconsider worshiping him. After all, he did kill 11 innocent people who had nothing to do with the wedding reception that upset him. That doesn't say much for his character.

Charlie and Mauritians

If you don’t read the facebook comments on L’express' page, this article may not make much sense to you. I have included screenshots of those comments for those who haven't. If you want a translation, I can provide it.

If you want to view the screen shots first, go to this link.

I wasn’t going to write an article on this because I think that L’express has done an admirable job of covering the attack on Charlie Hebdo but it has become increasingly clear that a lot of people in Mauritius have no idea what freedom of speech truly means. Even worse, a lot of them even view this as something that the cartoonists deserved. This article specifically addresses the comments seen on the L'express facebook page.

There were two main misconceptions that kept showing up. First, people claim that “you should respect all religions” and second, people conflate race, religion and individuals.

When people state that you should have respect for all religions, what a lot of them actually mean is that you should respect people of all religions. Religion is a set of beliefs a person chooses to obey, not a group of people. It is possible for someone to respect the right religious people have to choose their beliefs, without having any respect for the ideology they decide to follow.

Just because someone believes in something doesn’t mean that it automatically deserves respect. Communism is a belief, as is white supremacy or astrology. Some of those beliefs may even be extremely important to the people who hold them, but that doesn’t make them above reproach.

It is dishonest to put religious beliefs in a different arena just so others cannot question them. A multi-cultural society doesn’t need people to respect each and every one of their neighbor’s beliefs to exist peacefully, you just need people to respect people’s right to have those beliefs, whatever they may be. What if a devout Catholic were offended by the sale of contraception in supermarkets? Would you "respect" their beliefs by not using it?

You cannot force others to follow your beliefs simply because they are sacred to you, whether it’s preventing McDonalds from selling beef burgers or drawing a picture of Mohammed. If your religion places a prohibition on eating beef or pork, don’t eat it. If your religion places a prohibition on pictures of your prophet, then don’t draw any. You do not have the right to demand that other people follow the restrictions your faith imposes on you.

There are radical Hindus in India who rioted to prevent the release of the movie PK because the movie offended their beliefs. Salman Rushdie’s book, “The Satanic Verses”  is still banned in Mauritius because it might offend some people. If your beliefs are so fragile that they can be challenged by other people reading a book, watching a movie or drawing a cartoon, then perhaps you should reconsider them.

While someone’s beliefs may well be an important part of their lives, people are not their beliefs. It is entirely possible for me to think that someone’s beliefs are stupid and still think that that person is good and intelligent. I have seen so many people wrongly make the claim that Charlie-Hebdo has insulted a billion Muslims.

They haven’t.

They may have offended your beliefs but they certainly didn’t insult you. It’s not their fault if you are incapable of separating yourself from the religion you chose to follow and realizing that you are not your beliefs. Muslims and Islam are not the same thing, neither are Hindus and Hinduism. One is a group of people, the other is a set of beliefs.

Some people even accused L’express (And Charlie Hebdo) of “inciting religious hatred” or “hate speech.”

Blasphemy isn’t hate speech. Blasphemy mocks your beliefs, not you. Saying “Jews should be killed” is hate speech. Saying “Judaism is bad” isn’t.

Inciting hate doesn’t mean provoking a fanatic who holds his beliefs above all else, including the laws of the country and human rights. Inciting hate means saying “Members of X religion deserve to be wiped out” or saying “X people are criminals.”

It may be true that by drawing a picture of Mohammed that the cartoonists insulted Islam but they certainly have not insulted Muslims. Islam is not a race, it’s a set of beliefs followed by people who could be white, black, Arab or Asian.

A lot of the people currently claiming that the newspapers are "inciting hate" don’t seem to realize when they themselves do that. I remember that around 3 years ago, Radio Plus held a debate on gay prides and I was shocked when people called and openly said that they believed gay people should be killed. Calling for the murder of people because of their sexual orientation IS hate speech and far worse than drawing a picture mocking a religious figure.

In a lot of comments, there was an underlying assumption that criticizing or mocking religion is inherently bad.

You may say or think that religion is only about "peace and love" but there have been a lot of bad things done in the name of religion, there are a lot of things still being done in the name of religion, right now, as you read this. To make blasphemy illegal is to deny people the ability to address those issues. We need the ability to mock, satirize, and yes, sometimes insult your beliefs, because those beliefs have caused a lot of pain around the world and disowning the people causing it as "not true believers" doesn't really solve the problem.

Would a world where blasphemy was taken seriously by everyone really be such a good one? 

A blogger in Saudi Arabia was given the first 50 of 1000 lashes for “insulting Islam” last week. Does that sound like a good thing to you? In Pakistan, 14 people are on death row and 19 are serving life sentences for “insulting Islam”. Do you really think that offending someone’s beliefs is worth that? Is that a tolerant society, where people respect “beliefs” instead of people and whip, jail and kill those who do not?

I, for one, would much rather live in a world where people are more important that the things they believe in.

Another common reaction was “Why don’t you care this much much about Palestine?”, implying that you can only care about one issue at once. Well, using that logic, I could ask, well why do you care about Palestine so much when the number of people Israel killed in 14 years is less than what ISIS killed in one year or Boko Haram killed in a few months? 

People have the capacity to care about more than one thing at a time. The reason people are expressing their solidarity with the cartoonists and not the 2000 Nigerians killed in Boko Haram’s raid isn’t because they don’t care about them. It’s because Boko Haram isn’t a controversial topic. No sane person would claim that Boko Haram is justified but I have seen too many people claim that the attack on Charlie Hebdo was. Freedom of expression is a subject that affects all of us and it’s something that we can stand up for and maybe make a difference in the way it is practised in our own countries.

The irony is that Charlie Hebdo often drew cartoons in support of the Palestinians. They didn't just make fun of radical Islam.They mocked orthodox Judaism, called out the Catholic Church's pedophilia scandal and published anti racism cartoons.

Side Note:

I'm going to end by addressing this image that I've seen on Facebook, that some people have pointed out as an example of the western world's "hypocrisy."

The reason this post was removed isn't because of his opinions but because he used the word, "Niggers" which that is considered hate speech by a lot of people in the U.S because it targets individuals of a specific race. Facebook automatically flags and removes posts which have the word "nigger', it is dishonest of the poster to imply that his beliefs are being censored.

This is what facebook says about their community standards: "Facebook does not permit hate speech, but distinguishes between serious and humorous speech. While we encourage you to challenge ideas, institutions, events, and practices, we do not permit individuals or groups to attack others based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, gender, sexual orientation, disability or medical condition."

This is Navin Ramgoolam

There are a lot of questions Mauritians, especially Millenials like myself will be asking themselves tomorrow as they vote. I won't be able to vote tomorrow, but I deeply wish I could, because as disillusioned as I am with politicians, the coming elections may mark the start of a darker period of Mauritian history.

I'm going to start by saying outright that I don't like Navin Ramgoolam. He's a thug, a bully and has a sense of self-importance that rivals that of past African dictators. I can't think of a single politican who isn't corrupt or self serving but Ramgoolam isn't just that, he's a danger to the country.

This is the man who had his political opponent, arrested for sedition because he called the government a "pedophile government" after the cover-up of a teacher's affair with a student.

This is the man so arrogant that he openly boasts about giving his friends public land leases.

This is the man who gave his mistress important government contracts and allowed police officers to assault a photographer who dared to take a picture of said mistress.

This is the man who had his mistress's husband thrown in jail just to harass him.

This is the man who had journalists arrested for the first time in 13 years and started his infamous string of arresting even more journalists for "broadcasting false news." 

This is the man who has relentlessly used the police force in Mauritius as his personal guards, arresting people he didn't like and harassing his political opponents.

This is the man who wants you to give him even more power, a seven term presidency and immunity from prosecution, even knowing and seeing all that he's done.

He's had ten consecutive years to fix the country's woes and after two terms as Prime Minister, what does he have to show for it? 

Our infrasture is so bad that several regions of the country don't have running water. Our newly built roads are crumbling. Our new graduates sit unemployed while diploma mills run by "friends" of the prime minister flourish. If he hasn't fixed or even attempted to fix any of those things in 10 years, why do you think he will in the next five?

Or maybe you don't like Ramgoolam either. Maybe you're voting for the Ptr/MMM alliance because you want Berenger to be Prime Minister...

Are you really that naive? Do you honestly believe that there's still at this point any chance of that happening? 

Even if we ignore Ramgoolam's recent description of Berenger as a fish he managed to bait, in which universe is a megalomaniac like Ramgoolam about to cede command to Berenger? If he doesn't discard Berenger after using him, the next five years are going to be a humiliating exercise where the members of the MMM are constantly going to play second fiddle to members of the Labour party.

You don't have to trust Berenger just because he's the leader of the party you identify with. He's fallible, like the rest of us, not a god who always makes the right choice. He can be wrong and in this case, he definitely made the wrong choice by trusting Ramgoolam.

If I were in Mauritius, I would vote for Lepep simply because I think Ramgoolam is a far worse choice that any other. 

What are you voting for?

Berenger as Prime Minister? We both know that will never happen.

Do you think anyone can be worse than Ramgoolam? He's put the country well on the way to a Banana Republic in the last ten years. Give him five more and he will do it.

Let's say you're still undecided, maybe you don't have strong feelings about either alliance. 

Do you think that any person should be allowed for rule for fifteen consecutive years? Because I certainly don't. No one man should be given too much power. He's had the country for two terms, it's high time we had a change of government.