Editorial
In our daily lives, we hear a lot of words that may sound or are indeed offensive in nature but often they are said in good-humoured banter and more often we may choose to ignore them or respond in kind. In cases where a person intentionally uses abusive or offensive words in order to humiliate a person or provoke him, he may fall foul of the law and, if there is a complaint, could be prosecuted for committing an offence under the criminal law in force in the country. For their part, politicians are known to be sensitive to public opinion, but they are usually reluctant to take action against offenders, who might have ‘insulted’ them verbally or in print, due either to social media blowback and further ridicule or to unintended political consequences such action could produce. Senior politicians in particular would have developed a sufficiently thick skin to handle the inevitable barbs of a free press and also of their constituents, and they would usually take in their stride such ‘insults’ like ‘gopia’, ‘sinois nef’, etc., for instance, which in any case are regularly traded in our own National Assembly and MPs reprimanded by the Speaker when he is not busy looking the other way.* Read More… Become a Subscriber
Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 15 April 2022
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