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Showing posts from August, 2017

Maurice en délire...

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More than a decade ago, Infotech was supposed to be an Information Technology (IT)-based fair. It would have been logical to request people to submit their mobile number for receiving SMS of details of the exhibitors. How these IT industry experts, similar to other exhibitor fairs locally, still firmly believe that doling out paper leaflets, pamphlets, brochures, etc., is mind-boggling, to say the least. But this phenomenon of advancing-in-reverse-gear appears to be entrenched in our landscape. For instance, why call ourselves a cyber-island when even the most mundane of administrative and financial transactions require your physical presence and documents, and your payment in cash? Even better: to the undiscerning eye the skyline of our CyberCity is sexily "developed" from afar, but when approaching you would be surprised to realise the operators are quite traditional: banks, accountants, consultants, call centres and some universities – you’d be hard-pressed to fi

The burden of choice by default

In all fairness we must thank our collective wisdom for bringing us to accept the outcome of the polls. Since 1968 our people have been mature enough to give our full support to the verdict of the polling stations: either keeping the previous leader and his team or seeking a new one to steer the country in some other direction, but we all accepted the outcome. Our consent however deserves to be re-examined periodically: the present circumstances where our country is now being driven by someone who was not voted for his present post. This poses the question of his legitimacy. Did our three crosses of December 2014 consent to this new direction? What about the opposition - for the worse or better, our system designates them by default, i.e., a pis-aller imposed in the form of the second-best electoral candidates failing to garner the majority of votes. In a democracy, it's our collective consent that gives legitimacy to the action of representatives. Should it not also apply to t