<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

You know that feeling of intense and desperate panic that one feels when things have fallen apart and we know it is not within our reach to make them right again?

This is where authority figures, leaders come in. When we?re little ? even when we?re not so little ? we turn to our fathers. When we?re adults and daddy cannot protect us anymore, we turn to those who have asked to be given the honour to lead us.

The feeling of panic turns nightmarish when the doors leading to the leaders are desperately locked, when despite all your cries and pleas, there is no answer to the pounding of the doors, no reply to your rhetoric question ?anybody home??

Nobody was home on Tuesday. We still do not know why.

But the leader finally reacted and made it to the door; he opened it, said the right words and sent out the army to protect us just as we were beginning to despair. He has said no with all the might that his office confers upon him. And he has meant it.

But Navin Ramgoolam was late. And he shouldn?t have been.

But at least he was there and he has dealt with the situation in his way. The end result, I suppose, is what matters.

The doors of other wannabe leaders, on the other hand, have remained frightfully shut. Even though hot air was regularly blown through them.

Paul Bérenger ? to all intents and purposes, a leader of the people, if not of the nation - pompously said: ?If I were Prime minister, I would have found a solution to this problem in 24 hours.?

Really Mr Bérenger? Then why have you not bothered to publicly intervene to calm things down when the going got tough? Why remain so aloof? Did you feel it wasn?t your problem just because you are not in power? Is that the kind of leader you are?

A fair-weather one?

Pravind Jugnauth of the MSM has not once deemed it appropriate to get involved at all in the debate. He is so obsessed with sodomy, he cannot think of anything else. One of his numerous advisors should have whispered in his ear that it would have been a wonderful opportunity to try and prove that he also can be a leader - not just on paper but in real life.

Unless, of course, he is also a fair-weather paper leader.

But, at least, we know now, don?t we?