<B>By Deepa BHOOKHUN</B>

The culprit can?t be Rama Sithanen. He did say, didn?t he, that he wasn?t a magician? In the absence of such paranormal powers, it would have been impossible for him to make the names of two medical practitioners magically appear on the list submitted by the Health ministry to the Indian High Commission in the matter of the scholarships granted by the Banaras Hindu University.

Then who? Are there people in government ? or close to ? endowed with magical powers? But hang on a minute; isn?t magic ? the kind practised by commercial magicians ? simply a matter of manipulation, psychological or otherwise?

This must be it then; we are confronted with a clear case of psychological and physical manipulation and the ?magicians? ? whoever they are ? are thinking the show is still on and they have to keep the illusion going. This is the only reason I can think of, why nobody is willing to come up with any credible explanation in this shameful affair.

Except that show time is up. And somebody needs to inform the ?magicians? of this fact. I guess they could be forgiven for thinking they still had to perform because, for some obscure reason, the opposition and its un-unanimous leader have been very tepid on this issue; I wonder why.

The fact is that two medical practitioners, Rishi Purryag and Anju Ramdinny, have been granted scholarships they haven?t applied for. Or at least, not officially and not through the proper channels.

So either they both cancel their enrolment and come back to Mauritius to resume their contractual work in public hospitals or they personally bear the cost of their further studies. What they will not do and cannot do is pretend nothing is amiss and ignore the inconvenient inner promptings, which others might call conscience.

The ?magicians?, on the other hand, because they are part of ? or close to ? a government that says publicly it believes in good governance and transparency, have some explaining to do and it is to be hoped that they will not be allowed to cop out. The example needs to be set now and the signal should be loud and clear.

Now if someone had a twisted mind, along the lines of Eric Guimbeau, this could be called ?Hindu bashing?. Every reasonable person would agree that it is not, that it is not about the religion or race of those two shameless medical practitioners but that it is about principles. Principles that should be sauce for the goose as well as for the gander.

Any MP, who happened to write ?Hindu? next to religion when he filled in his form at the Electoral Commission, could, if he were so inclined, take it upon himself ? as that confused Eric Guimbeau did ? and go and see the President of the Republic to complain about racism.

Everybody else would call him a bad-faith fool. Which is exactly what he would be. If the hat fits, Mr Guimbeau, please feel free to wear it.