The upcoming budget: Expectations of a Pada’s U-turn !

As the election looms, politics infiltrates everywhere; it seems to have succeeded in winning over some of the the main actors of our media coverage who have suddenly become widely flattering of our Pada with narratives that have a strong flavour of chatwaism.

For quite a while now, they have been trying hard to steer the narrative from the overall perception that our Pada is all about hype and ineptness towards the new fantasy that Pada will be our saviour, our proverbial finance minister who will be be delivering us from his own populist policies that could not have been anything else but a recipe for disaster- "short term political gains for long term economic pain”!

Our till-now feckless finance minister turned messianic overnight, we are told , will be charting out a more competitive economic model in the upcoming budget,…”the government aims to balance growth, equity, and environmental sustainability, reflecting a broader global trend of transitioning from welfare-centric policies to more competitive economic strategies.”

That’s a bold attempt of chatwa journalism to extricate our Pada from being pigeonholed by our top local economists as the failed one-time finance minister who was leading us to a dystopian future (and has delivered little in the way of reforms till now) to being our rescuer who will be peeling back the façade of prom­ised prosper­ity to provide, those shut out of prosperity, the means to a shin­ing future via a more competitive model not via the quick short wins of competitive populism .

How do we reply to such fantasy about the very one who will be legating us with the constant risk of a Moody’d downgrade because of our elevated levels of budget deficit and debt/GDP ratios and other major contingent liability risks to Govt ?

Let's just pick up another main issue facing the country -that of environment sustainability -to expose such biased coverage and we leave our readers to judge for themselves on the possibility of expecting such reformist policies from this regime based on the figment of the imagination of chatwas rather than evidence !

From the same newspaper, in the article titled “Projets sur le littoral : la transparence s’érode”, it is noted that “L’EIA n'est plus adapté aux développements immobiliers accélérés de ces dernières années. C'est le «Strategic Environmental Assessment» qui est d'actualité. Or, même les autorités en font fi. Et c'est le SIT, qui était supposé promouvoir l'agriculture, qui se lance dans des projets immobiliers et hôteliers. En attendant, la carte des «Environmentally Sensible Areas» pour nos côtes dort dans le tiroir du ministère de l'Environnement." …..Quite damning for a regime that is proposing environment sustainability….

Other doubters :

Selon Adi Teelock, membre de Platform Moris Lanvironman, "Mais quand on voit le bilan du gouvernement, on a quand même quelques doutes parce qu'il est en train de faire le contraire de ce qui doit être fait en ce qui concerne l'adaptation aux changements climatiques”

Sebastien Sauvage, représentant d'Eco Sud est, lui, sceptique. "On ne peut pas prendre cette intention comme une bonne nouvelle parce qu’en regardant le bilan du gouvernement il n’y la a pas eu d’actions pour protéger l'environnement durant ces cinq dernières années., …… le Climate Change Bill et l’Environment Act sont que cosmétiques.”

When we have such watchdogs with teeth and the inclination to use them, they always end up shattering the fantasies of our chatwas !