Extension of TRNUC mandate by a further three months |09 January 2023
On Tuesday December 13, 2022, the National Assembly extended the current TRNUC mandate for a further three months – until March 31, 2023.
This is the second extension requested because originally they were supposed to deliver their final report to the President on August 31, 2022 but they could not meet that date so they asked for an extension until December 31, 2022. Alas this was not enough either so now they are adamant they will finalise their work by March 31, 2023.
When you consider that the current TRNUC team received 498 complaints, of which 471 were valid and accepted for investigation and 27 did not qualify as bone fide complaints and were rejected, it is no surprise to some of us who know how difficult it is to obtain information from government departments. It is like trying to get water out of a stone. Everyone I have spoken to and some members of the TRNUC Association of Victims have also said people out there are saying they would rather wait another three months and give the commissioners and staff of the TRNUC team sufficient time to do the job properly.
This sentiment was echoed by honourable members of the National Assembly including the deputy Speaker, Hon. Gervais Henrie, and he said that he was prepared to give the current Commissioners and staff of the TRNUC team 12 months if that is what is required in order to deliver their final reports professionally. Several other members concurred because some of us know how hard it is to do anything in Seychelles anyway.
We are talking here about getting information from government departments to corroborate what the witnesses say because TRNUC cannot take it as gospel everything the complainants say because some people are very good at making up stories or exaggerating to give the point they are making more credibility, therefore everything must be checked and verified.
TRNUC Commissioner Marie-Therese Purvis, who was at one time the school teacher of Hon. Sebastien Pillay, the current leader of the opposition, said that the TRNUC is not producing a collated set of reports but a report on each complainant. This is what the Act calls for and this is what they are doing. Members of the TRNUC Association of Victims have expressed their gratitude to Mrs Purvis for coming forward to the National Assembly and telling everyone what has been done and what is left to be done.
One or two honourable members of the National Assembly expressed the age old saying by Martin Luther King Jr used when he was being held in Birmingham, Alabama jail that “justice too long delayed is justice denied” and made famous by William E. Chadstone when he wrote “justice delayed is justice denied”.
We must be mindful that the atrocities of the coup d’état lay dormant for 40 years until 2017 when an NGO that I incorporated at the Registry Office called Seychelles Truth Reconciliation and Peace Platform (STRPP) carried out an in-depth study of the various coup d’états of the world and 53 countries were researched. A copy of the research was handed to President Danny Faure in 2017, and then in 2018 President Wavel Ramkalawan who was the leader of the opposition formed a Truth Reconciliation and National Unity Committee in the National Assembly. I recall doing a presentation to his new team and handing over to them a copy of my report. I also recall Mr Ramkalawan’s team inviting Pastor Christian Lodewyk from South Africa, who met with President Danny Faure, to join us in a presentation at ICCS of how such an endeavour was handled in South Africa. The National Assembly Committee produced the TRNUC Act 2018 and the Commission known as TRNUC was born and that is the current team today, changed a bit along the way, that has spent four years working on this project.
Their job has not been easy because they are asking senior civil servants in our government of whom some of them participated in some way or another in the coup d’état for information relating to the event and honestly you need to swallow two panadols my friend before you get any information. Stories abound, we do not know whether they are true or not, about pick-ups turning up at State House in the middle of the night when James Michel was President and carrying away loads of files and destroying them. So now if you want information you had better take two more panadols.
Our congratulations go to the current commissioners and staff of the TRNUC team in particular Gabrielle McIntyre, who brought with her the right experience and knowledge of how to manage a TRNUC team and most of all what are the legal pitfalls along the way and the people of Seychelles are eternally grateful to Mrs McIntyre for the dedication she has put into the job. The team is also blessed with the presence of cool Michael Green, Bishop Wong and Jacques Gbilimou Koui as commissioners.
In more than 40 countries researched their coup d’état reconciliation efforts have failed and the failure has been mostly because the outgoing guilty President has oiled the palms of the incoming President to protect his rear on the way out. Even in South Africa it is claimed that F. W. de Klerk got away lightly because someone was paid well to ease him out gently. Here in Seychelles the leaders who perpetrated the coup s’état are slowing dying away but then we in Seychelles are not looking for retribution, we are looking for redress and reparation so that we can put this matter into our history book.
We, in the TRNUC Association of Victims (TRNUCAV) are satisfied that the TRNUC commissioners and their team have delivered value for money in this matter. When you consider how much our politicians spend when they regularly and frequently travel overseas on First Class airline tickets and stay at the best hotels, the money spent and due to be spent on resolving our coup d’état is more than justifiable and affordable. People are calling for this matter to be put to bed so that our country can move forward because while we argue among ourselves the damage caused to the victims gets worse. This Association seeks redress and reparation for the victims because they have suffered physical harm, they have lost their home and family, they have been tortured, exiled and imprisoned like animals by the same people who pretend they are civilised and yet they have made some of our people endure the most heinous mental bipolar and psychotic schizophrenia known to mankind. The time for reparation has arrived.
The current levels of compensation for the coup d’état victims have already been worked out by experts both at home and internationally and this odious debt the State has acquired has to be met. Compensation against violation of human rights has no geographical or political boundaries and it follows the Natural Justice Principles apply. We are now coming to the final stage towards closure and closure we must achieve to set the souls of our nation free and take away this burden from our future generation.
To those perpetrators who have not come forward, we will allow your own conscience to continue to torment you for the harm you caused to our unsuspecting brothers and sisters and may your soul find a peaceful place to finally rest. We are at peace with ourselves, are you?
