Anybody familiar with All the President?s Men, Alan J. Pakula?s 1976 cinematographic masterpiece about the Watergate affair will undoubtedly remember Deep Throat. This shadowy character fed information to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, two Washington Post journalists, who ultimately discovered that the burglary of the Watergate building went all the way up to US President, Richard Nixon. As a result of this investigation, Richard Nixon was forced to resign. After years of frenzied speculation it emerged, in 2005, that Deep Throat was, in fact, Mark Felt, a high-level FBI official. To many, Mark Felt, was the ultimate whistle-blower.

According to the Government Accountability Project, a very active American public interest group, a whistle-blower is ?an employee who exercises from speech rights to challenge corporate and government abuses of power that betray the public trust?. Thus, at the most basic level, a whistle-blower is simply a person who is exercising his or her fundamental right to freedom of speech.

The Watergate affair propelled whistle-blowing into the limelight and demonstrated just how vital these acts are for the well-being on any democracy. For that reason, the scandal was followed by a raft of legislation known as ?sunshine laws? after a famous quote by Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis who stated, ?sunshine is known as the best of disinfectants?. Not only do these laws seek to protect whistle-blowers, but they also provide for financial reward if their denunciations prove to be correct. The knock-on effect of this is that many prestigious law firms are willing to have their services retained by whistleblowers.

Unfortunately, this is trend is yet to reach our fair shores. In fact, whistleblower protection seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Public officers, for example, are muzzled by the Personal Management Manual (PMM). Issued by the ministry of Civil service and administrative reforms, the PMM ?to assist officers in their operational responsibilities and the efficient discharge of personnel functions?. It accomplishes this, and in great detail to boot. Yet certain provisions of the PMM are not exactly propitious to a transparent environment. ?No officer shall, unless he is specifically authorised to do so, communicate directly or indirectly to the written or spoken press or to any other person outside his own Ministry or Department any information to which he has had access by virtue of his official position.?

The only piece of legislation protecting whistleblowers in Mauritius is the Prevention of Corruption Act (PoCA) of 2002. This law stipulates that an informer must disclose an act of corruption to the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC). Moreover, he or she must ?believe on reasonable grounds that the that the information he discloses may be true and is of such a nature as to warrant an investigation under this Act?. The only protection afforded to the informer is immunity from civil and criminal liability that may arise from his or her disclosure. POCA does not however protect the informer or his family from harassment in their personal and professional lives.

But why is whistle-blower protection so important? For a wide-range of reasons, as it happens. ?Whistle-blowing and whistleblower protection go hand-in-hand?, explains Maneesh Gobin, a barrister.

?Becoming a whistle-blower is one of the loneliest and most difficult choices one can make in life. Those who come clean on the wrongdoing they witness in the corporate suite or in government risk immediate ostracism.?</I>