<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

Poor, poor us! We give them so much, we take them to unimaginable heights and yet they still take us for granted!

We know too well that the minute there is a politician with a microphone in front of him, he is going to bullshit us with his crap. And yet. Yet we continue to give them the benefit of the doubt. And they keep pushing their luck. And they continue to force gibberish down our throats, thinking in their mighty arrogance that we will never throw up. They might want to be careful…

After Maurice Allet and Eric Guimbeau decided to “give a hand” to government in utter disregard for what they had yelled on the backs of lorries in June last year, rumour has it that Pravind Jugnauth, the MSM self-righteous leader, may also want to go and give a helping hand. All, of course in the country’s higher interest. Obviously, at this point in time, the MSM and the Alliance Sociale (AS) have not done any deals yet - at least as far as we know. That PM Ramgoolam may want to deal is not surprising. “I am a gatherer,” he likes to say. At the end of the day, he would be silly not to want to gather all of them under his generous umbrella; I mean what else could a prime minister wish for? No opposition? It’s any politician’s dream. And every citizen’s nightmare. But our interests and those of politicians don’t always go hand in hand, do they?

The rumours started at some point during the bitch fight of the two main opposition blocks. No one gave much credit to Lady Rumour then… Until the day the PM started showering compliments on the president of the Republic. Now, of course, good citizens that we are, we were very pleased that the two men at the top had decided to be civil. And, since we have been told time and time again that SAJ did not do politics no more, we refused to add two and two together. Except that the rumours that the AS and the MSM might strike a deal are getting more and more insistent.

But Mr Jugnauth, who has been shouting on every rooftop for months on end about how he was a man of principles, how he was loyal to Bérenger, how he would never work with a man such as Ramgoolam (described as the devil, himself), would have a hard time explaining how his principles got to fly out of the Sun Trust’s majestic windows.

But, at the end of the day, we may say what we please but our friends who fancy themselves as saviours of the land at different times in history will do exactly as they wish. So, they might want to use adjectives sparingly next time they find themselves with a mike in hand or on the back of a lorry.

Not for our benefit – the people through whom God speaks, always find themselves losing out when politicians have decided to strike deals – but for their own benefit so they retain some measure of dignity, so they can stand with their heads held up high next time they stand on that lorry. So they can look at people in the eye.

We may be gullible fools most of the time but the players of the Mauritian political game should be careful about the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back. The people have been fooled many times and yet they keep giving you the benefit of the doubt, even though they send their warnings in subtle ways. Warnings that you choose to blatantly ignore, the latest of which has been a strong opposition (the joke of the century) and a government with a slight majority (about to become one of the strongest government, if we believe all that is being said.)

One word of caution; don’t push your bloody luck.