Interview with the Hon. Ashok Kumar Subron, Mauritius Minister of Social Integration.
“An ecosocialist perspective is the political agenda that needs to be on the table”
Mauritius' Resistanz ek Alternativ is the first overtly ecosocialist party to ever hold both parliamentary and ministerial seats in an African government. The members of the party have always held firmly to their convictions, certain that by always working always to meet the material needs of the people, the Mauritian people would slowly understand what they are about - and . Some Resistanz members also founded the Centre for Alternative Research and Studies to spread conscientisation messages: Dany Marie, David Sauvage, CARES PresidentStefan Gua, Devianand Narrain, Michel Chiffone, Veena Dholah, Dany Montille, Ashvin Gudday, Blackwell Louis, Anne-Gaelle Carré, Ian Jacob and many others. Today, a member of Resistanz, who has been campaigning on labour and ecosocialist struggles for over four decades, is a national minister of Social Security.
The Mauritian ecosocialist Political Party Rezistans ek Alternativ (Resistanz) is part of the Alliance for Change coalition that won 60 out 62 seats in the November 11 2024 elections. The other members of the Alliance for Change coalition are the Labour Party of Navin Ramgoolam, son of the founding Prime Minister Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, the Mauritian Militant Movement (Mouvement Militant Mauricien) (MMM) of former Prime Minister Paul Bérenger and the centre right leaning Nouveaux Démocrates. Resistanz ek Alternativ fielded three candidates in the elections: Ashok Subron in Constituency 4 (Port Louis North and Montagne Longue), Dr. Babita Thanoo in Constituency 8 (incumbent Prime Minister Pravid Jugnauth’s district) and Kugan Parapen in Port Louis Constituency 1.
After the Alliance for Change’s victory, Resistanz ek Alternativ was invited to head one ministry. They nominated the party head, Honourable Ashok Kumar Subron, to lead the Ministry of Social Integration, Social Security and National Solidarity. A second member of Resistanz, Honourable Kugan Parapen, is the junior minister of the same portfolio.
We recently caught up with the Honourable Ashok Subron to talk about Resistanz ek Alternativ’s plans in the coming months and years, new post-growth imaginaries and ways of dismantling destructive physical and mental capitalist structures.
Roland Ngam: Ashok, thank you for taking time off to talk to us about your activism, your party’s victory in the recent elections, the School of Ecology and much more. To start off, could you please just tell us about Resistanz ek Alternativ, why it was created, and a bit your journey to the top, which is not very usual for a democratic ecosocialist party in Africa?
Ashok Subron: Resistanz and Alternativ is a political movement. We describe ourselves as an ecosocialist political movement that articulates ecological issues, with working class issues, with social issues and democratic issues. After its founding in the early 2000s, we relaunched Resistanz ek Alternativ around 2014 and 15. It was a year of genesis of thinking and the first action of Resistanz was to challenge the ethnic-based political system in Mauritius that we inherited through our long colonial history where there were lots of ethnic-based political tensions during independence times, tensions which also opposed the working class consciousness and so on. In Mauritius, you have to classify yourself, otherwise your candidature will be rejected. So we triggered our political action by saying no, we do not see why we should be classifying ourselves in one ethnic category. So, there was a long judiciary battle to the Supreme Court, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council, The Privy Council alongside a political battle. And it also shaped the emergence of what we call Morisianism, which is our version of humanism our version of our multiple and indivisible identities. We are a product of colonialism we are a product of our struggle, you know we didn’t have an indigenous population, people came from all over the world and settled in Mauritius. Some were colonisers, slave holders, slaves came from Africa, Madagascar who were forced to work here, indentured labourers, others, coming with many cultures and ways of life. We have been into slavery for two centuries, we have been into indentured labour system for one system and we also brought many cultures, many ways of life from different parts of the world and all these make the rich and also the painful part of our multiple and indivisible identity. So Resistanz embodied this and it is one of the important kinds of genesis of our resistance. Now, after 19 years of legal battles, political battles, in these elections, we concluded an electoral alliance that this would be the last time in the history of Mauritius that any citizen would be compelled to classify himself to stand candidate in an election, this provision would no more exist because the winning alliance of which we are a part has agreed that the obligation for ethnic-based classification will be eliminated with a constitutional amendment within six months of the general election.
Roland Ngam: And what is Resistanz about, your foundational philosophies, after Morisianism...
Ashok Subron: Resistanz is also known for its deep involvement and articulation with the class struggle. I myself, I have been a union organiser for many years, almost 30 years with the working class, what we call classical working class, the sugar industry, transport workers, port workers, free port workers, together with what you call the new generation, BPO (business practice outsourcing or labour brokers) sector, tourism sector and organised precarious workers. We have been in this for our entire lives, this was our kind of way of living together with the working class and this has also been one of the important contributions that we made in the elections. In the elections now, there would be some important advances for the working class, the advances would be the generalisation of the five-day forty hour week, which means that Mauritians will work only Monday to Friday, Saturday and Sunday would be non-working days. One of the reasons for this qualitative change is to ensure work-life balance of Mauritians in order to reorganise society, reorganise family and how we deal with our children because there are lots of ruptures in bonds with our children. And this is the aim. We will also have changes in labour laws. Changes to how the law relates to workers in times of climate disasters. Mauritius is now known for common flash floods from the months of October to the months of March, April every year now. We are in climate change and this has informed part of …because of the involvement of Resistanz is also part of the programme that we agreed and stood in the last elections.
And Resistanz ek Alternativ is also known, besides the ecological issues, we have been fighting for the preservation of ecosystems, life support systems of Mauritius, wetlands, sand dunes and ecological treasures. We have been fighting for beaches, access to beaches for Mauritians and for kind of controlled tourism, we have been fighting for new hotels to be built inland not on coastal lines. We have been arrested and prosecuted for these many struggles but now…, we have been in these struggles for more than 18 years. We have also been active in developing small farmers and people-owned renewable energy co-operatives, which was blocked by the previous government that did not agree to give authorisations for such cooperatives to produce electricity and distribute it through the state grid. So we are known, mostly we are known, in 2020 when there was this shipwreck…
Roland Ngam: Wakashio…
Ashok Subron: Wakashio shipwreck and oil spill, it triggered a mass movement where Mauritians participated in helping make what we call the booms to mitigate the oil spill in Mauritius and this triggered a never before seen mass movement in Mauritius which had the, from a disaster, we created a kind of love to preserve our oceans, but this movement also triggered a political expression and was accompanied in parallel with massive demonstrations in Port Louis of more than one hundred thousand, one hundred and fifty thousand. So this is what Resistanz ek Alternativ is about and of course when now we went into elections, the ecological and environmental was a core of our contribution into the programme. For the first time, we have a mandate now, a mandate for nature rights to be recognised in the constitution of Mauritius. This is a major qualitative step. There is a democratic mandate and alongside this inclusion of nature rights in the constitution, we have also included two other judicial principles.
One is, we will introduce the, what we call, public interest litigation in the legal system of Mauritius which will apply both to ecological environmental issues and social and economic issues. This is a major change. And secondly, with the nature rights we also changed the law to introduce class action, that is the principle that for example in a region where you have an economic disaster and consequences, all the people in this region are automatically entitled to reparations unless these citizens say that she or he don’t want to be part of the reparations list. So, these are major steps forward, and so Resistanz ek Alternativ have included this in the agreement so now we have a political mandate, electoral mandate for these structural changes in the legal system of Mauritius and constitutional framework.
Resistanz ek Alternativ is also known for its struggle in terms of democratic and participatory democracy. We have been into campaigning for the right of recall to be introduced, we have been saying that in many liberal democracies, including here, we have been saying that for example here we have the right to express ourselves every five years for five minutes. And when we said it in the electoral campaign, people started correcting us saying that no, we have only five seconds, okay, each five years to express ourselves with the vote. So now we have got an electoral mandate to introduce the principle of the right of recall to move more into participatory democracy in Mauritius, so for example what we are thinking and has been agreed, after two years of an election, the electors will have the right their MPs, their Member of parliament if they are not satisfied with the work of the MP. So, this is a major change, a major breakthrough since universal suffrage in 1948, since independence in 1968 and since the consolidation of the right to vote in the constitutional amendment in 1982. This would be a major leap in democratic and constitutional advancement in Mauritius. Resistanz has negotiated and included this in the agreement, now there is a mandate for it.
Resistanz ek Alternativ is also known for being involved in defending what we call the digital rights of the people, the digital rights linked with digitalisation of society, data protection, the right not to live in a surveillance society, so we have also introduced this constitutional change for civil liberties privacy within the electoral agreement. We were foresighted and what happened in the elections proved, unfortunately, that we were right. We did not want this to happen in our country. During the campaign, we saw the ugly faces of surveillance society and political surveillance of a whole country. We got tape records that were published on Facebook, TikTok, Prime Ministers, Ministers, States People, private people talking openly about murder cover up, talking openly about instructions given which have ethnic undertones and we have conversations where power was out of the state but expressed outside, in Mauritius we call it the kitchen.
All this was public and the reaction of the government during the electoral campaign was to ban Facebook, to ban TikTok, to ban YouTube and to ban Instagram until the end of the election, and this was, as you can imagine, faced with harsh reaction from the youth from the people. Mauritius is very democratic… we don’t like abuses in this country. They might not express it, you know concretely, but even the idea, they don’t agree with it. But when the government decided to ban, the people and the youth rose up and this also contributed to the massive victory of the opposition, of which we are part it is called the Alliance for Change. We got a mandate now, so it is clear, it is spelled by the people, we already had it in the programme, now we have to translate it into legislation, into constitutional change.
Roland Ngam: So let us talk about the elections. Why did you run this time? What was in your policy manifesto?
Ashok Subron: So I’ve explained to you what is Resistanz, how we went into elections. Let me just add that this election, …so we decided - Resistans ek Alternativ decided to go into this election with eh, the first aim was to get rid of this government with its authoritarian tendency. I would say neo-fascistic tendencies that we have seen in the recent last ten years, but mostly in the past five years.
It crossed red lines and the red lines were murder of its own people, in the constituency of the Prime Minister, this murder was covered as suicide, and a court of justice said that it’s not suicide, it’s homicide. This is one red line. The second red line was a kind of what we call, planting of drugs in opposition people’s cars. The third element of this red line was what we call sniffing, placing equipment into the Mauritius Telecoms system to redirect and capture internet connection in the country. This is very very bad, and we decided, we saw this happening in 2022 and we decided to build a platform of opposition parties, parliamentary opposition parties, together with extra-parliament opposition parties to get rid of this government. And this is one of the elements in the Alliance du Changement.
This is one of the reasons, and we said, Mauritius is concluding two cycles. The first cycle is the cycle of the previous regime, ten years of governance. The second cycle is post-independence Mauritius. We have a kind of system that we inherited which needs to be reviewed. The whole constitutional system, how institutions evolve after 56 years of independence to integrate new evolution of society on planetary level, climate change, to include participatory elements in the governance system of the country, to introduce new work-life balance for the people, etc. etc. So change the government and change the system together. This was the motto of Resistans ek Alternativ. So we’ve done the first part of it, we’ve changed the government, the change of the system is the other agenda.
Now let me explain. Resistans ek Alternativ decided to conclude an alliance. The whole process culminated in the conclusion of an alliance between the Labour Party, the Labour Party is the first working class party that emerged in 1936 and is the party that brought independence to the country, the party that laid down the first rights of trade unionism, you know universal suffrage. The second party is MMM which itself was born after the Labour Party won independence and made a coalition in 1968, and MMM was born in 1969, and became the second labour left movement of Mauritius. And then, the third movement is Resistans ek Alternativ. And then there is the splinter of another group called Nouveaux Démocrates. It was a kind of historical, natural alignment, the old labour party, the old leftist party and Resistans ek Alternativ, it was a natural alignment, there is a kind of a historical thread in that. This was much appreciated by the people and this also kind of regalvanised these parties and then we said, there were four parties, we said one plus one plus one plus one is not equal to four, it is equal to six because when you put these parties together, and the people join the parties then the electoral power was one plus one plus one does not equal to four, it is equal to six.
Out of sixty seats for candidature, Resistanz got three seats. The labour party had 35 seats, what you call tickets in Mauritius, candidature tickets, the MMM had 19 seats, we had 3 seats and Nouveaux Démocrates had 3 seats. But the election result was that we won all the seats and now Resistanz has three members of parliament and we are also entitled to have one minister.
We won all the seats, so Resistanz now has three national assembly members, we are in two, eh, one urban constituency, Port Louis, it’s Kugan Parapen, a young, one of the youngest MPs, and then in Constituency number 4, it’s where I was elected, it is an interesting Constituency, both urban and rural in the north of Port Louis, the capital and then we have another elected member Dr. Babita Thanoo, she was elected in Constituency number 8, a rural constituency where she is amongst the candidates who beat the Prime Minister. This is a constituency where nobody wanted to stand candidate, Babita had the courage to run there, and the Constituency now appreciates her for this courage and the people have decided to elect her and her two running mates who defeated the previous Prime Minister.
Roland Ngam: And now you are in government!
Ashok Subron: We were not sure whether we would accept a ministerial position within government. After discussions in Resistans ek Alternativ we decided to accept it, not because we want to become a minister in itself, but this is where all the decisions are taken for the country and this is also where we need to be to ensure that the electoral agreement that we had and which has been approved by the people in the election is concretised. This is the reason, so once you are elected…I was nominated by the Prime Minister to run one of the biggest ministries in the country. It is a ministry that includes social security, and it has another component known as social integration and national solidarity. This ministry deals with almost sixty percent of the population, which is six hundred thousand to seven hundred thousand people directly or indirectly. I have been there for one week now and I can say that it is a huge ministry, it is a huge responsibility but I do have a junior minister who comes from Resistans ek Alternativ. The Prime Minister said, “you take this ministry, senior and junior, and I know you will do good things, take this”. So I said okay. But we will assume our responsibility with love for the people.
Roland Ngam: What is the mood in Mauritius right now?
Ashok Subron: After the elections, it is very rare that this happens in the country…people are happy! You can walk around the streets. People are just happy! They feel liberated, and its rare in a society where there is an overwhelming sense of joy, a sense of …and also…I’m proud, very proud! It is the third time in the country’s history where we have an election where the opposition won all the seats. And the people are also saying, look, you people we elected you, but if you don’t deliver, if you do as the previous government did, then we can vote against you in a similar manner. This was the message.
Last thing I would say is that this election had an element of the Arab Spring in it, I would call it the Mauritian spring where people decided to take over the destiny of the country. There were rumours of election rigging etc. etc. and they put themselves as the defense of this electoral process. There was a citizens’ vigilance during all the last week of the elections, people did not sleep 48 hours before the elections in many many areas of Mauritius. People slept in front of the polling station. During counting, people checked the cars. When a policeman stops someone in Mauritius, the policeman will say “this is a routine check”, un check de routine in French. So people stopped some of the cars that were carrying ballot boxes, ballot stationery, and people said to them: “sorry to disturb you, we are doing a check de routine”. This is one element of what I would call the Mauritian spring. It is a pacific, political revolution, it is not a social revolution, it is a political revolution that occurred in the electoral process. And it is one of the election, the issues were very hard, murder of political actors, interdiction of Facebook, and lots of money in this election, the previous governments had a lot of means, but this was one of the calmest elections in our history.
We’ve had elections where the was a lot of violence. This was one of the most peaceful elections in the history of Mauritius. And the last, and I think the most profound, you, because of the history of Mauritius we have this kind of ethnic consciousness, you know the people overwhelmingly overcome this divisive consciousness which imprisons us, imprisons the people, imprisons society imprisons advancement, social, enlightened advancement and now people said, religion is not the issue of this election, ethnic-based classification is not…no, we want to get rid of this mafia-type government. We want to get rid of a government that has organised a mafia system to protect the classical rich, classical capitalism but also the emerging mafia capitalism, capitalist traders, the middleman. But you know the Morisianism is the major historical advancement.
One of the biggest dangers that we face in Mauritian society is that one day we get into ethnic-based violence. The hope and the positive energy put by the people will protect us for many many years. They spent the night infront of polling stations. They put their lives on the ballot to make sure that every vote was counted.
Roland Ngam: You position yourself as a radical ecology party. A short history of election campaigns around the world show that these are not necessarily winning issues at the moment, such is the aversion for anything that deviates from mass capitalist propaganda. However, Resistanz ek Alternativ has never deviated from its principal message. Please talk me through the courage and the strength of the convictions that go with taking such a principled stance.
What we are trying to do is build power... in Mauritius, to give power to the people
Ashok Subron: We need to take the power at national level, to be in a position to influence power at national level and then this needs to be articulated with regional organisations, global organisations. Ecological issues cannot be separated and confined into NGOs’ work. It does not mean anything to say coal in the hole and oil in the soil - I adhere to these principles pf course - but it is meaningless without the power of the people, without the power of the country. You know this kind of middle class and petty bourgeois approach which dissociates politics, which dissociates power and the balance of power issues would be fatal to our countries and for humanity.
Look, we don’t want to give anybody lessons, to other countries, but what we are trying to do is build power, for example in Mauritius, to give power to the people. That is what Resistanz and Alternativ has been doing, to build power, to build electoral power, but then to give the power to the people in between elections. Give power to the people to defend nature and the ecosystems, to protect themselves in the face of what is coming. Huge threats that are coming, so, the power issue needs to be at the centre. You know, nice NGO booklets are not sufficient. I’m not saying it is not important – it is not sufficient. It is limited. A conference is important but not sufficient. We need to challenge the power relations.
History has proven, the last 28, 30 years have proven, you know, all the indicators are that the emissions are growing, the consequences of emissions are growing.
This would be on the ecological side. And then if you look at the global level on the economic and the social side, it is a very unequal society. The more time is going the more the world has become unequal. So, an ecosocialist perspective is the political agenda that needs to be on the table. We have done a small bit in our country. We don’t know whether we will succeed or not, but at least we have tried. We have tried and we in government now have also included in our manifesto for the Mauritian state to build a centre. Here in Mauritius. And education and research centre on climate and ecological crises for the whole people and activists and movements of the Indian ocean. It is like the school in which you are now, but a version that will be more supported by the state and open to Indian and southern African countries…
Roland Ngam: …a pan-island movement.
Ashok Subron: Yeah, a pan-island solidarity for research and education. It will be the space where we can reflect together as indian ocean and coastal Southern Africa. also, let me add that Resistanz and Alternativ in government also, apart from the ministry that we got, one agreement that we got has been that the government is creating, what we proposed and was accepted, a just transition commission and this just transition commission will be chaired by a Resistanz and Alternativ person, in fact it would be David Sauvage, one of our main ecosocialist thinkers.
Also this, look, we do not have any illusions about the economic policies that the new government will roll out. We know where we agree and where we disagree. The position of Resistanz and Alternativ is to bring major constitutional reforms and our stance is guided by our old forefathers here and …why would they stop here? So let us give people power. There are lots of things that people will agree and disagree on. It is for them to decide. It is the same… we know what kind of economic policy – neoliberalism will be here, let me be very clear, we don’t have any illusion about this - but we have created the space for alternatives to emerge. Can it emerge and succeed, we do not know. But we have created the space for alternative ways of organising society, organising the economy on a just transition basis, we have adopted the just transition paradigm put forward by progressives all around the world, and we have created…you know we have lots of imagination, how to develop renewable energy, how to use our oceans for alternative transportation with the sailboats (with generators), how to reorganise the coastal line with the participation of the people, lots of ideas. So this just transition commission will be our space. Our vision. Maybe the socioeconomic future of our country. We have made a contribution. It is just a small contribution.
Roland Ngam: Two very quick questions before we finish. Firstly, you helped initiate the Indian Ocean School of Ecology, which offers emancipatory education to Mauritians, Indian Ocean islanders and coastal Africans. This has been an important part of your journey, and, after your election and subsequent appointment as minister, you stopped by the 2024 edition of the School. What is the significance of CARES and the School of Ecology to you?
Ashok Subron: The School of Ecology is part of the struggle that I have been involved in and it is part of the thinking process that has been taking ground and developing since twelve years now, and it has always been a space where we can exchange ideas of the struggles, of the states of our struggles in the country but also within a regional and continental dimension. We always learn from each other and these kinds of spaces and struggles have shaped what we are. If we are in government and have some kind of clarity, the clarity came from discussions, in schools like these. And you know being in power, in government is part of the political struggle, is part of the socio-political struggle, is not the end of the struggle it is another stage of the struggle.
The struggle for change, for the liberation of humankind, it is a constant, no? It is a constant and this is a moment in this process and me as a minister, I walk on the streets, I come from the working class, I have been living with the working class and they are my people. Yesterday for example, I went to see senior citizens, they wake up at six o’clock to go to the social security headquarters, offices, in which I am in charge, me and my junior minister. But it is not acceptable that people wake up at five, six o’clock, go there for some of these business services, and then they pick up a ticket and at two or three, they are still there, and they are told to come the next day. This is not possible, but there are two approaches, try to solve it or go and meet the people, meet with workers too, I am a unionist too.
Roland Ngam: Secondly, What would be your advice to ecosocialist or democratic socialist parties in other countries that are looking at your success for inspiration?
I don’t have any advice to give to my comrades in the region but I will say that what we are doing is also a product…I have been an activist in this region since the first years of the WTO in 1994, okay, and being in a new kind of regionalism, progressive capitalist regionalism and I am bringing this with me, Resistanz and Alternativ, into government and we will never forget this. On the contrary, we will do all that we can to empower this consciousness. This is why in the manifesto there is this space for an Indian Ocean southern African research and education centre, so that the reflection continues. What we are doing, lastly, as we are instituting the right of recall, maybe it won’t be as we would wish, but then we have created the space for the next generation to carry it forward.
Roland Ngam: Maybe let me rephrase that by asking what are some of the values and priorities that you have within Resistanz ek Alternativ and which similar parties should or maybe could adopt?
Ashok Subron: Firstly, create spaces, all the spaces possible, for people to express their views on power. This is very important. Let the people express themselves.
Second, put love. We will be MPs and Ministers of the people and live with the people, and this explains… the day before I have been in my constituency organising measures to mitigate climate change consequences as floods spread, cleaning the rivers and we were slipping in the mud and so on, this is the way I have been. So I am thinking that in one week, site visits in my constituency, one week visits to the services that are provided by my ministry and then of course we’ll have meetings with the officers of the ministry. It is a big ministry. But this is what nourishes us as activist ministers, and I just hope that people will appreciate this style, but I can say that it is appreciated. People want this kind of style. I can say that in the coming days I will take the metro system to go to work. The feeling that I have is that the people that have made you and us so we have to be with them. Never distance yourself from the people. Of course, you will have lots of places, people will invite you to have dinner at their place to come to festivals that they organise, we wont be able to do all these. Some of them at least, but we will be certainly with the people to discuss their problems as inhabitants but also as citizens of the country.
Third, And to address this crisis, existential crisis, there is no way apart from challenging the very basic beliefs, the foundation, and the whole philosophy that underpins this mode of thinking, and we have seen how for the last 28 years the failure of worldwide mechanism of COPs, a complete failure, and the more time is going, the more the threats, the more the lives and the livelihoods of the people all around the planet are being threatened….are already living the consequences of this climate and ecological crisis and the people of our region, Indian Ocean, Southern African region are the ones who would be facing more risk than other people on the planet. The entire planet is under threat, the people of the planet, but people in this region are more heavily impacted with rising sea levels, with floods, with cyclones now going deep into land-based countries. we had the experience of Mozambique and Zimbabwe and so for people to be able to act and to change the power, the balance of forces, we have been growing a tradition, socialist traditions, where we have certitudes…I think we need to have doubts, doubts enable you to question, to move forward.
Four, live the life of the people. Even as a minister, I have cars, I have official bodyguards. But I am here with you, with you, with no bodyguards. Live a simple life. In fact, you corrupt your politics when you start corrupting your way of life.
I would add that, fifth, keep in mind that what we are living, the suffering, the climate…are products of structures. It is not any question of human behaviour or human attitudes. They are creations of structures, human structures, economic structures, power structures, social structures, okay? This should always guide us.
And listen to people. Listen, you know, listen and convince, you know. In elections there are two tendencies, you know, what they call communication. I would say marketing. Elections are not mere marketing. Elections are convincing people about your ideas, your programme.
Sixth, deepen the solidarity. What happens in Zimbabwe, what is happening now in Mozambique is of concern to us. Keep on the solidarity to help, to act and, what can I say, I won’t use any big words, be an ecosocialist, this is the biggest word I will use. Be an ecosocialist because I think our forefathers and mothers in the last century, they were right on many things, but I think now is our responsibility to take from heir thinking and bring it, you know, articulate it with the evolution of society, of the struggle, of the people, of the planet and move one step forward. For example, I realised that our grand, grandfathers have already given us the socialist approach: each according to his ability and to everyone according to their needs. That is how they lived.
But this is a socialist concept! This is Karl Marx, and so, we have to take, I have to give another approach to the classical approach. Everything in line with society. Ecosocialist principles, these are concepts and paradigms that apply in real daily life, and I would advise my friends and comrades to never, you know, this way of thinking is not stuck in the last century, and thoughts and political thinking evolve. This is the beauty of it. Evolution, coevolution, this is what ecological systems have taught us too. Do not say, “This is old things”. It is a process.
Roland Ngam: Thank you so much for having us.
Ashok Subron: Thank you!
