<B>By Pauline Etienne</B>

One step forward and? two backward. This could sum up some politicians surprising proposals of restoring death penalty. The country is facing problems of law and order; fair enough! Let?s go back decades ago and re-establish a barbarous practice that has not even proved a successful deterrent in countries where it is still in force.

The most sadistic citizens would say that they are against death penalty because the sentence is too rapid and prisoners don?t have time to reflect on their crimes. Those people would prefer see these criminals stagnate in prison for the rest of their lives. This is however not the point here.

The point is simply that no one has the right of life or death on someone else ? and this is just the reason why many criminals are imprisoned. The justice can?t punish someone by committing exactly the same offence as he did on a member of the society. This is against pure logic.

And I?m not even mentioning the problems of potential miscarriage of justice. If the same brilliant idea had been put forward and implemented a few years back, Marcellin Azie might have already been already hanged today. Yet, DNA tests showed that he was not the one to kill Nadine Dantier in Albion.

In fact, those whimsical politicians remind me of people who are generally dead against death penalty but who admit they would re-consider the question if a member of their family was involved. The problem is that we can?t just decide that it would be a good thing for the country to re-establish death penalty according to our whims and fancies.

We agree that there has been a surge in the degree of violence throughout the country recently. Burying a friend?s body under concrete in one?s garden after piercing his tongue and beating him to death is a sign that Mauritius has reached a peak in violence, which makes it no better than big town centres where people are afraid to walk in the streets both by day and by night. Sooner or later, we might be afraid to go to sleep even with all doors and windows properly closed and alarm systems connected.

It is true that something must be done to drag Mauritius out of the maps of dangerous places. But we should in no way make way for such extremes. Some politicians might be so interested in coming back to power that they are trying to appeal to people?s primary instincts. But we must agree that? responsible politicians do not do that?