If the driver of your gravy train started to get on your nerves, would you derail the train? Having worked that one out, self-preservation quickly returned our five thin-skinned ingrates back to the fold.

But why so much contrived outrage over something so petty in the first place? Why the pea-hearted defiance, at a time when Organisation du Peuple Rodriguais (OPR) is facing the biggest battle of its political life?

Were external forces at play to undermine Rodrigues? precarious ?Autonomy?? Why the unexpected rapprochement between members of the five? Are the mini-mutineers just keeping their powder dry until after the election? Will et tu brute poison Serge Clair?s dreams for years to come? Will the esprit de corps ever recover? Who knows!

What would have happened to Clair, had a motion of no confidence been carried? Not much! I suspect, perhaps a few uncomfortable months, until 2007. It is not easy to drown a fish.

More importantly, what would have happened if Clair had suddenly become fed up with it all, and decided to quit politics and OPR altogether? Well, dear reader, OPR would almost certainly have self-destructed and been consigned to political oblivion for decades to come; the snouts-in-the-trough culture would have flourished and the small clique of socio-political elite would have looted the country freely, while the poor scraped and scrounged to survive. In short, the country would have gone to the dogs.

After the death of El Cid, the legendary 11th century Spanish national hero, he was strapped upright onto his horse, in order to get the reluctant troops to follow him into battle.

And so it was that El Cid rode to victory, dead on a horse. Clair is no El Cid, but he is OPR and the people simply would not support an OPR without him. For the moment at least, his future seems interchangeably linked with that of OPR.

If a little loyalty still sits under the skin of self-interest, then OPR?s tactics committee should be building on the cult of personality, which has cost a lifetime to create.

The myth should be talked up, not down. Murals, paintings, posters, statues, billboards? should be commissioned to portray the bespectacled white-haired man of the people, the humble-leader, the wise-father of the nation?with books in one hand and a watering can in the other tending to his maize crop etc. etc.

O.k., I will put away the violin, but dear friends, if I have exaggerated my exaggerations some-what; it is to lay emphasis on the fact that killing the golden goose would not be in the best interest of Rodrigues?

The alternative would be to let the Loups-Garous roam the streets of Port Mathurin unchained.

Alain LEVEQUE