So, Prime Minister, was it the bland continental breakfast, the greasy full english breakfast that you probably find irresistible during your obligatory white Christmas, or the tastebuds arousing masala dosa that provoked the outpouring of spiritual lyricism? What was it that made you believe that having breakfast with fundamentalist Christians who believe a first strike nuclear war is morally justifiable under any circumstances was a better proposition than helping Rama Sithanen and Arvind Boolell in their ultimately futile quest for European understanding of our situation?

Perhaps it was the irrelevant search for an elusive spirituality that disregards the relentless waste of public money whilst more and more people fall helplessly in the poverty trap that sticks in the craw; or the disingenuous attempts by the local ?Pravda? of publicly paid media advisors to pass off a contentious prayer meeting by religious lunatics as an official function by the US Congress which made people ask this simple question: What does it take for the Prime Minister of this sovereign country to realise that people are not stupid and they can see clearly that sanzman has been by and large the replacement of one lot of highly paid sycophants by another lot of equally incompetent grinning idiots and that the underlying problems of mismanagement of the economy and gross waste of public resources continue on their relentless course?

Fortunately, not all politicians are like our homegrown variety and there are still some people around the world who are prepared to put the national interest before selfish, sectarian ones. Let us look at a few recent examples around the world and compare them with the one or two cosmetic changes here that pass for sanzman :

Useless missions

1 - Ramgoolam was voted into power on a promise of narrowing the gap between rich and poor and called it the ?democratisation? of the economy; he still draws the same huge salary that Berenger?s government enacted for Prime Ministers and spends a colossal fortune on useless missions with obscenely massive expense allowances that serve only to swell the bank balances of his retinue of court jesters. Cabinet and ex cabinet ministers are not only filling their faces in the gravy boat but some are actually buying luxury boats, presumably to count their ill gotten wealth on the high seas.

Evo Morales recently became President of Bolivia after making the same promise and has given a clear message with his politics of austerity by halving his salary ? he now earns Rs 50 000 a month, a 57 % cut in the previous President?s salary of Rs 125 000 per month. As no public official can earn more than the President in Bolivia, his decision has led to an across the board cut of 50 % in the salary of all cabinet members who now earn Rs 35 000 per month. The salary savings will create a fund of Rs 80 million which will be used to fund educational and health projects. Oh, and he has also told his ministers to stop being so pompous and that henceforth they will be known as ?public servants?. An example of his genuine desire to servi so pei is the fact that his working day starts at 5.00 every morning, presumably to ward off any demons still driving around at that time!

2 - Ramgoolam came to power after rightly criticising the catalogue of corruption in the previous administration. However, the only body officially mandated to fight corruption remains leaderless and the Independent Commission against Corruption (Icac) is still waiting for that elusive first success. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia obtained power recently after pledging to fight corruption; one of her first presidential actions involved the sacking of the entire staff of Liberia?s finance ministry. She went to the ministry to deliver the news personally and invited all dismissed employees to reapply for their jobs but with a clear warning for the corrupt ones to disappear completely out of public life.

3 - Both Berenger and Ramgoolam promised that women will receive a more equitable representation in the National Assembly ; we still lag way behind countries like Mozambique and Bangla Desh (both with female Prime Ministers) who have a far greater female representation in their parliaments. Michelle Bachelet recently became President of Chile by promising to give half the cabinet jobs to women; she has kept her promise and previous male bastions like the ministries of finance and defence are now firmly in female hands. Thirty years after being tortured by Pinochet?s goons in the Chilean army, she is now their Commander-in-chief! In Mauritius, female politicians can only aspire to become ministers for? women and, once appointed, slavishly conform to the stereotype of female subservience to a highly questionable male supremacy.

<B>Unexplained wealth</B>

4 - David Mwiraria, the Kenyan finance minister, resigned last week after being named in a corruption scandal involving millions of pounds allegedly stolen by senior members of the government. Opposition leaders are calling for other named ministers including the vice president to resign also. All this came about as a result of the efficiency of the Kenyan version of Icac and the single minded determination of its director, John Githongo, who has had to seek asylum in the UK as a result of threats from the ministerial thieves and President Kibaki?s reluctance to deal with corruption.

In Mauritius, ministers never resign; they instead issue libel writs to stop you and me talking about their unexplained wealth or any of the many corrupt activities that they indulge in. Any woman blind enough to sleep with any minister should at the very least expect a nice portion of government land in return for that ordeal and need have no worries about any police, Icac, or parliamentary inquiries.

5 - We are scouring the world with our humiliating begging bowl looking for benevolent nations to pull us out of the hole that we have dug for ourselves. Other countries simply get on with it and make do with whatever resources are available. Brazil is the clearest example where a bit of lateral thinking has resolved two of the biggest problems that we face: sugar and energy prices. Brazil?s ethanol industry has saved that country billions of dollars since the 1970s oil crises when it turned to ethanol as a substitute for petrol. Ethanol now provides more than 40 % of its motor fuel. Seven out of ten new cars sold in Brazil are now ?flexi-fuel?, i.e. they can run on either ethanol or petrol. The country is expanding sugar cane plantations in order to meet increasing demands for ethanol at home and abroad. US ethanol production has quadrupled in recent years and five million cars can already use a rich mix of 85 % ethanol and 15 % gasoline called E85. Sweden has decided to do away with oil completely in the next 15 years by switching to renewable energy like biofuels, etc; Saab and Volvo have been ordered to develop cars and lorries that burn ethanol and other biofuels. As Mona Sahlin (yes, another female politician!), the Swedish Minister of sustainable development, says: ?Our dependency on oil should be broken by 2020... the price of oil has tripled since 1996... a Sweden free of oil would give us enormous advantages...? Only 32 % of Swedish energy now comes from oil, down from 77 % in 1970.

Ethanol has had far reaching effects on the Brazilian economy ; an estimated 69 billion dollars that once would have been spent on importing oil from the Middle East has stayed at home and helped to revitalize once depressed rural areas. More than 250 sugar mills have been recently constructed to meet increasing demands for ethanol.

What do we do in Paradise island? We whinge and we moan that those nasty Europeans have stopped paying us far more than the market price for sugar ; why on earth should they continue to pay far more for something that they can get much cheaper elsewhere?

Sugar cane is the most energy rich ethanol feedstock known to science and we have perfect conditions for the growth of sugar cane. Instead of sugar barons and politicians complaining about the drastic cut in sugar prices, they should start actively copying what is happening in the rest of the world. The days of cheap oil prices are over and we either find other sources of energy to promote economical growth or we drown in the slurry of self pity and inertia. Sugar cane provides us with the most favoured ingredient for cheap, renewable, environmentally friendly energy. It will create employment and wealth and save an enormous amount of foreign exchange. Listen to the head of one Brazilian sugar cane growers? association, Senor Manuel Ortolan: ?My family has been in the sugar cane business for the last thirty years and this year is the best it has ever been ? and compare it with the whining, defeatist nonsense in Mauritius.

Arvind Boolell ought perhaps to get in touch with Vinod Khosla, a co founder of Sun MicroSystems who has now started his own group, Khosla Ventures, to invest heavily in ethanol in the United States after a prolonged study of Brazil?s success. This is what he has to say regarding ethanol: ?What I discovered was that ethanol might completely replace petroleum in the US and in other countries. This was a great shock to me.? Or he could get in touch with Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Airlines fame. He has started an ethanol-inspired subsidiary called Virgin Fuels and calls ethanol ?the win-win fuel of the future?.

There are many more like them. We should stop begging for favours from other countries and learn to stand on our own feet. If people do not want our sugar, then let us convert it into something that they and we are dying for : cheap, renewable energy at a sustainable price that will enrich our island. ?Emergency? missions to save our sugar exports are doomed to failure because nobody wants to buy it at the prices we are asking and begging for favours is never an adequate substitute for proper diplomacy and imaginative economic initiatives.

Having breakfast in America in an atmosphere of religious fervour and mystical nonsense is no way to run any country. It is high time we learn how to complement thinking out of the box (yuk!) with thinking out of the barrel; the oil barrel that is!

R.A.J.