Mauritian Petition

8 Saturn have been writing petitions in their History lessons, and have come up with a range of suggestions - these included..

• compulsory Cantonese lessons
• iPads for everyone in school
• ban photo-shopping in magazines
• Children's Olympics
• ban salad
• longer school holidays
• stop badger culling
• more rights for children
• tougher laws against bullying

One of the more detailed petitions came from RM whose family are from Mauritius. She was keen to write in more detail about Mauritian politics for the blog and her article is below.

My petition is a little different because my mother is in politics for Mauritius and is in cahoots with Clovis Aziz- they are both joint leaders of the “Rassemblement pour la Liberte et la Democratie” which in English means “The rally for freedom and democracy”.  Clovis Aziz is the son of one of the ex-prime ministers in Mauritius. Rassemblement pour la Liberte et la Democratie are a new political party in Mauritius and they are planning to make many changes to Mauritius.

Clovis Aziz says: ‘The point of politics is not to become a millionaire, it’s to work and help our country. Most prime Ministers don’t actually care, all they want is to fill up their pockets with money. In Mauritius many parties are very wrong. The opposition of Rassemblement pour la Liberte et la democratie, have favouritism and only care about the people in their party and not about helping everyone else. They mix religion and politics- which is disrespectful and unnecessary. Also the constitution is a problem. We all were born on the island of Mauritius. We are all Creole. But why is religion everything to us? Why does religion separate our country? Thankfully our Mauritian passports just say “Mauritius”, no religion involved. It’s a small thing that unites our people together. We should all just keep our religion to ourselves, as the prime minister is a Hindu and he helps just the Hindu’s- Why not the Christians? Why not the Muslims? In Mauritius we have a caste system. Vaish, Babujee, Rajput, and Ravived. Vaish are the people who have a higher status in society and who have plenty of money and these are the people who the prime minister will help, and Ravived are the ones who are lower in society and not that rich. I want to change this, I am from a Vaish family but I want to help the less-fortunate, the other religions, because apart from all these differences we are still the same- we are all Mauritian. In 1971 we were a French Colony, in 1918, we became part of the British colony. However 50 years later, in 1968 we got independence. This is why Britain can’t do anything to help Mauritius. We are divided countries, and not very civil to each other either. This is why me and Rassemblement pour la Liberte et la democratie are trying to win. We want to help and make Mauritius a more equal country. We don’t care about the money, all we want is what’s best for our country. And remember, “Don’t wait for what the country will do for you- do it for the country”.’

I have also spoken to French director called Eric Baloo. He said the dictator is what is wrong with Mauritius and he also said: politics is everything. He is right. To change the dictator, we as Mauritians should unite together and protest because he is ruining our country. We all need to sort this out and Rassemblement pour la Liberte et la democratie, is the answer.

In my opinion I strongly agree with what Rassemblement pour la Liberte et la democratie want to do and I really hope they win the elections because they will make Mauritius a better country.