Voice of Youth video competition

A video competition is now being organised by the NGO We Love Mauritius on themes related to sustainable development.

Read more on the ComStudies blog at:
http://comstudies.wordpress.com/

Entretien avec Joel Vallat

Pour voir un entretien avec Joël Vallat, Proviseur du Lycée Louis Le Grand (France), réalisé le 27 octobre à l’Université de Maurice suite à sa conférence sur ‘L’Education au XXIè siècle et former à l’excellence’, cliquer sur:
http://comstudies.wordpress.com/2009/11/20/leducation-au-xxie-siecle-joel-vallat/
La conférence était organisée par le Département de Français de la Faculté des Sciences Sociales et Humaines en collaboration avec l’Ambassade de France.

Talk on News Media, New Media and Elections

The US Embassy in collaboration with the Communication Studies Unit of FSSH is organisinf a talk on the above theme by Ellen Hume, US Media expert, on Thursday, October 22, 2009 from 12 30-14 00 hours at the University of Mauritius.

The talk will the held in the old Engineering Building in Lecture Theatre 1 (to access, take the lift in the New Engineering Tower to the second floor, then take the long corridor on the left. LT1 is on the right at the end of the corridor).

Read the rest on the UoM-Communication Studies blog.

Diksioner Morisien d’Arnaud Carporan

Ene ti mesaz Arnaud Carporan ki mo ena plezir difizer isi:

Invitasion nasional pou enn partisipasion dan
deziem edision premie diksioner kreol monoleng

Koleksion Text Kreol pe anons bann Morisien ki stok premie edision Diksioner Morisien finn epwize. Nou remersie tou dimounn (etidian, partikilie, lapres, institision, etc.) ki finn permet sa premie lavantir-la vinn enn sikse lor plan nasional, rezional ek internasional.

Nou finn deza rant dan faz preparasion deziem edision. Nou pe lans enn lapel nasional pou ki sak Morisien ki anvi kontribie ladan kapav fer li. Zot kontribision kapav dan form :

1. Koreksion lor bann definision ki ena dan premie edision;
2. Propozision lor bann mo ki manke dan premie edision.

Dat limit pou kontribision : 31 oktob 2009

Kontribision kapav fer direkteman lor
diksionermorisien@gmail.com

ouswa par SMS lor enn sa bann nimero-la :
7954652; 7597095; 7522908.

Pou plis detay, pa ezite kontakte nou.

Mersi.

Dr Arnaud Carpooran
Responsab proze

Results of the African Media Barometer for Mauritius

As announced yesterday, the African Media Barometer was launched today at the University of Mauritius by Oliver Dalichau of the FES (Friedrich Ebert Stiftung). There was a very small attendance but we hope that this will mark the first stage for wider dissemination of the report to all actors involved or interested in the Mauritian mediascape. Actually, hard copies of the report will be circulated with the members of parliament as we feel that it is important that they be sensitised to issues related to press freedom and regulation as decision-makers.

Soft copies will also be sent to prominent actors of the civil society, including NGO’s, associations and of course, the media. In fact, I am putting a copy online so everyone can get access to it. Please feel free to disseminate and, of course, to comment. I personally think that it is through discussions, dialogues, exchanges of ideas that we can progress collectively as a democratic society.

Also, as promised, here are some of the key findings of the AMB exercise which was conducted for the first time in Mauritius in August 2008. The next exercise will be done in 2010 in order to monitor progress made on the benchmarks.

Key results
In a nutshell, members of the panel (5 from the media and 5 from civil society) assessed the performance of Mauritius on the 4 main sectors as follows:

Sector 1: Protection and promotion of freedom of expression, including freedom of the media. Score: 2.7
Sector 2: Diversity, independence and sustainability of the media. Score: 2.9
Sector 3: Transparency and independence of broadcasting regulation whereby the state broadcaster is transformed into a truly public broadcaster. Score: 2.6
Sector 4: Levels of professional standards practiced by the media. Score: 3.0

Overall country score: 2.8
Note: The minimum score of 1 means the country does not meet the indicators and the maximum score of 5 means it meets all aspects consistently over time.

Areas which seem to warrant the most attention are:
- The nomination of members of regulation authorities for the audiovisual sector (which should be more transparent, open and should include civil society)
- The editorial independence of the MBC (and thus stop this silly lapdog attitude towards the government of the day and engage in real journalism to service the public, not politicians)
- The use of advertising placements by government in the media (which should not be used by governing parties to reward lapdogs and punish the others)
- The inactivity of press associations and civil society (which should all work towards promoting freedom of expression for all instead of their own vested interests)
- The lack of professional media associations and trade unions (can the journalists, columnists and chief editors stop bickering?)

So, what do we do from there? Well, let’s hope our politicians will read this report seriously and stop their silly antics against the press, that the media people will also stop engaging in silly wars against their own and not fall in the traps set by the politicians and that the population will start thinking in a mature and rational way and also use its power to shape the public debate.

Of course, comparatively speaking we are not so bad if we compare with many other countries of the developing or least developed world. But, we also have lots of room for improvement and we need to focus on making progress.

Here’s a copy of my presentation
and a copy of the 2008 AMB report for Mauritius
The report is also available on the website of the FES Madagascar at: http://www.fes-madagascar.org/pages/francais/publications.php

Launching of African Media Barometer for Mauritius

Tomorrow, the African Media Barometer for Mauritius will be launched at 10 a.m. in Lecture Theatre 2 of the University of Mauritius.

Mr Dalichau, Representative of the FES (Frierich Ebert Stiftung Foundation), will launch the report in the presence of the media. I will present key findings of the report and a journalist, Sunil Gopal, will speak about his experience.

The African Media Barometer is a qualitative tool for assessing the media on the African continent. It has been conducted for the first time in Mauritius in 2008.

I will write more about the findings after the launch.

The ethnic epidemic-Republic of Mauritius

Photo courtesy of Avinash

Since the last few days, the talk of the town has been the unconstitutionality of the swearing in of three deputy prime ministers in this country. As we all know, these were designated to supposedly reassure the minority ethnic groups of this country (i.e. the Muslims, the Creoles and the Tamils). A silly calculation which most of our political leaders cannot seem to get rid of and most probably never will. It makes me even sadder when I hear some commentators claiming that if we are not careful to take everyone onboard, then there are risks… Surely, members of all the different ethnic groups of this country are not always carrying their ethnic-formulae packed calculators with them and assessing all decisions regarding nomination decisions in this country!

True, we have to take into consideration how representative our elected members of parliament are with respect to the demographics. BUT, it is saddening to see that we tend to focus only or much more on the ethnic criterion in this country. We also forget that competence is much more important. It should actually be THE factor par excellence. Then, if we can have wider ethnic representation so much the better but COMPETENCE should be the prime criterion, don’t you think?

A silly idea has come to my brain recently: what if we looked for a proper mixed-blood candidate for President / PM / etc. (with 50% Hindu, 16% Muslim, 3% Chinese and 31% General Population ancestors – based on the very dated 1972 census which is still used for the Best Loser System). Then, we’d be sure he or she is really representative of the population, isn’t it?

In any case, I wonder what extra duties these people have done just because they have been nominated DPM? Our Constitution provides for only one DPM and rightly so because he/she (hey, no-one talked about gender when more than 50% of the population is female!) can replace the PM when the latter is abroad (or dies or is sick or whatever…).

As for the successor of the President (which according to many may well be the current one himself), it’s the same story that is being dished out to us. Talk about a rancid meal, hey?

A play you must see: BARAZ
Incidentally, there was a very nice play which was staged on campus yesterday by Gaston Valayden and his Sapsiway group with the help of Amnesty International. It is a very simple story of two families from two different communities which are at loggerheads and decide to build a fence between their houses. The play is vibrantly acted by very able actors and the references are very realistic. It has a very harsh but true depiction of how our local politicians use divisive techniques (‘NOU BANNE’ vs ‘ZOT BANNE’) to gain votes and maintain the population in intellectual infancy.

The representation comes, according to me, at a very telling moment when the very loudspoken so-called representatives of ethnic groups of this country are competing to plead for ministers from their group in the context of a possible reshuffling of cabinet.

Speaking of cabinet, this makes me want to flush out all those silly people with silly arguments that can only make us become more silly as a nation. Cry, our beloved country!

Back to life

Photo courtesy of Avinash

This blog has been dormant since May (yes, more than 4 months). So, it’s about time I brought it back to life. What happened? Well, the usual. Got busy doing many things, inter alia,
- playing a very tiny role in Wassim Sookia’s last film Rouzblézonnver, which won lots of first prizes in the MFDC festival
- acting as member of Mauritian assessment panel for the African Media Barometer of the Friedrich Ebert Stieftung Foundation
- being part of several committees for media campaigns at national level
- organising talks and being invited to several others
- getting busy for the UOM Research Week where we had the opportunity to test our cameras for micro-interviews with some volunteer students acting as journalists
- and of course, fun with the family at the hotel and for a series of birthday parties (no less than three parties for Anya alone!)

The latest activity was today when we were invited to a digital video conference at the US embassy about the nominating conventions for US presidential elections. This was the second DVC I attended and it was quite interesting though fraught with technical problems (aha, our infamous internet connection) and also intense debate between the speakers from Paris (a Republican vs. a Democrat!).

There were also some high profile local politicians (specially from the Opposition) which limited opportunities for asking questions as they tended to be given priority. It’s sometimes funny to see how politicians turn up and become active for all sorts of events when they are in the Opposition. Naturally when in government, they have other things, more important to do, which must have been the case of current members of government, of course, since they did not turn up…

Radio One show on political communication

I was at Radio One this morning and was Finlay Salesse’s guest on a show about the political communication of local parties, especially in the context of Labour Day meetings.

We talked about the techniques and strategies used by our politicians to communicate with their audiences, their posters, their communication advisers, their websites, their willingness (or lack thereof) to participate in live debates on private radios, etc. and compared the Mauritian style of political communication with that of more advanced countries.

In sum, my main point was that our local politicians are completely archaic in their approach to communication. I tend to think that they need to rely on basic and superficial means that are loud, aggressive and even vulgar in order to mask the vacuum in terms of ideas and messages.

Treating us like dumb
Labour Day meetings are a complete waste of time, energy and resources. They don’t serve any constructive purpose and in fact, they do not contribute to the enlightenment of the masses, rather they treat ordinary citizens like dumb children who need to be cajoled, policed but never addressed in an intelligent manner. It is true that our voters do act in an immature way but do our decision-makers provide possibilities for acting differently? Do they treat the electorate as intelligent and capable of making their own judgements based on facts, ideas and more importantly to question the super-leaders?

Even within the parties themselves, there is not much space for democracy. There might be temporary attempts at intelligent debates but it is not part of the DNA of our local political scene too accustomed to low-level arguments and the notion that super-leaders are ‘ene tigin pli tipti ki bon dié’. Our parties are run like archaic, medieval structures and even would-be ‘ténors’ within them toe the line for fear of losing their chances of climbing the hierarchy and get that so desirable possibility to be a candidate and later grab a ministry.

Young people are fed up with this situation and rightly so. It’s not the crowds of people in rallies/meetings that reflect what the masses think. Just like polls are not fool-proof. The grassroots are bored and tired. The only thing they can actually do is choose parties (not even candidates — as goes the local saying, ‘prend ene pié banane, peine li couleur parti ki pé gagner, li pou éli’) which are the least worst according to their personal judgement. A sad situation indeed for our democracry…

Mauritius Union menace notre liberté d’expression

Pour comprendre, lisez la dernière note d’Avinash sur son blog perso.