by Deepa BHOOKHUN

So MP Soodhun gets a job offer from the International Labour Office. He is so excited by the offer that he calls everyone he knows to announce that he might soon be leaving the country and resigning from Parliament while he?s at it. Then MP Soodhun retreats into reflection mode as people around him start downloading official election results from the Electoral Commission and trying to guess who might get his best-loser seat if ever Soodhun decides to fly to Geneva.

But, in the course of his thinking process, MP Soodhun suddenly realises that, if he leaves, his party might lose out and Paul Bérenger might get his leader of the opposition seat back. But this doesn?t faze MP Soodhun because he is spending his time weighing the pros and cons of his international career against his love for the MSM.

Then, after a couple of nerve-racking days, he informs his leader that his love for his country and for his party have finally won over. Pravind Jugnauth, deliriously happy with MP Soodhun?s loyalty to the party, calls a press conference to proudly announce that all is finally well, that dear beloved Showkutally Soodhun has selflessly decided to sacrifice what would have been an outstanding international career because he could not bear the thought of leaving the MSM. Oh and incidentally, the fact that Paul Bérenger could have won back his seat as the chief of parliamentary opposition did not have any bearing on MP Soodhun?s decision.

Of course.

This is the scenario that someone - I?d give a lot to know who - wrote out for Showkatally Soodhun. To what end? Your guess is as good as mine. But, of course, things didn?t happen exactly the way it was planned.

What actually happened when people heard of Soodhun?s impending resignation was that most of us didn?t believe he would go ahead with it. Many found "interesting" the fact that his job offer came just after the loudspeaker campaign fiasco. The excitement of an impending resignation, however, proved too big not to be entertained. So speculations were rife. And then, to nobody?s surprise, MP Soodhun announces that it would break his heart to leave his country and so he would stay and continue with the good work he and his party were doing.

And that?s the end of it.

So what was the point MP Soodhun was trying to make? I would have thought that, when the ILO offered him a job, the consequences of him accepting it would have hit him in the face straightaway and, if he absolutely needed to talk about it, the only people he would talk to would have been close family and friends and his party leader. Why the need to publicise what is essentially a private matter - with the full knowledge of the political repercussions of such an announcement - only to go back to square one a few days later?

Beats me. Beats everyone.

So, Mr Soodhun, what was that point you wanted to make, again?