What a proper “political program” is and is not – Mauritian history, too
17.04.2023
We live in times when the mainstream institution of “the political party” is both under attack and in serious degeneration. The only way to create proper political parties is to get at least one that is strong enough, in terms of its program and the support it can muster, to be able to force the others to follow suite and develop their programs. This is why we are calling on young people to join LALIT and help us do this right now.
So, what is a political program not? It is not something that pops up before a general election. It is something that is a process over time – of meeting, thinking as an individual human being, acting together with others, then again meeting, thinking on one’s own, meeting to discuss and debate these thoughts, then action together. This way the action follows from a common understanding of what needs to be done in order to make society a good place to live in for all. It is a collective process made up of individual thinking, and collective meeting of minds and of collective action. A program exists over time, and is tested over time. It involves publication. A newspaper, a magazine, a regular editorial on a web-site. This means the written word, that lasts over time. It means constantly building agreement, constantly analyzing the changing situation, and building new agreement. Social media is not ideal because it disappears into the past, acting more like the spoken word, described by the saying “parol anvole, lekritir reste”.
A political program is not something that is a list of disconbobulated notions, either. It is not where each person just announces an idea, and a leader just slings disjointed ideas together, however un-thought-out and contradictory, and even if each idea leads in the opposite direction to the other. A political program aims at unifying the following in a way so that everyone in the party, and ultimately even the broad masses of people, gets to share a common understanding:
- Analyzing present-day society, understanding how it works, and in the interests of which classes of people. How is it, for example, that 1% of people on earth each year, at present, accumulate twice as much as the other 99% of people? What history of social classes produced this enormity? By what mechanisms is this “class inequality” perpetrated?
- Developing a shared understanding on how we can act together in order to change the situation, and to change it for the better. What demands and actions will, in general, work towards this change? What will be the effect of the demand, if actualized? What classes will naturally support these demands because they are in their interest?
- Do we need to expect, in addition to slow change, a sudden confrontation when the parasites living off other peoples’ work and lives, are confronted? If so, how do we best prepare?
- What alliances do we need to make that will move us forward, not backward? Strengthen us not weaken us in our struggle for change?
- Do we expect the struggle we are in to take an international form? What forms of internationalism do we promote from now?
These 5 things are more-or-less the basis of a proper political program.
How does a political program develop over time?
One of the ways a political program develops over time is through a political party’s regular publication or “organ”, distributed, debated and constantly fine-tuning itself. This is not so big an ask. Only a few decades ago, each political party had its own publication. Let us glance briefly at the post Independence parties and their regularly published political organs that constantly shaped their programs, at certain times shaped them even on a day-to day basis.
Perhaps the best examples were the MMM and LALIT. The MMM had Le Militant, and when it got submerged in court cases and closed down, there was Le Peuple, then Le Nouveau Militant. The MMM newspaper, in the MMM’s heyday before it came to power, was sold by street corner newspaper agents and tobacconists all over the country, and also, more importantly, distributed street by street on a voluntary basis by MMM branch members every day, or every week. Every day or every week, both the editorial and the articles spelt out the program of the MMM. At the same time, Lalit de Klas was the newspaper of the LALIT tendency in the MMM, referred to at the time as either the “lalit deklas” or the “klas travayer an avangard” tendency. Every week, its editorial would delineate its programmatic difference from the Labour Government and from the MMM. The subjects constantly developed ranged from attitudes towards strikes and marches, views on labour laws, repressive laws, Diego Garcia, analyses on communalism and racism, demands for education, housing and health, political lines towards Apartheid and the Israeli state’s domination of Palestine, the promotion of the mother tongues Kreol and Bhojpuri, attitudes towards patriarchy and participating in women’s emancipation and liberation struggles. LALIT’s publications relied even more heavily on voluntary work by our own activists, and REVI LALIT until today works this way.
The MMMSP also had its own newspaper or regular leaflet. As indeed did Serge Rayapoullés “Lalit Travayer” (that came out of Fron Nasyonal Anti-Somaz) and Bizlall’s political groups would bring out regular newspapers like “L’Outil”, even if for a while, and Bizlall also collaborated with Ehsan Khodabux, now owner of DefiMedia, on a newspaper, Nouveau Lizour.
Each party used its regular publication to make its own political program known, and its recruitment was on the basis of this on-going taking of stands.
But, it was not only these parties that developed programs.
The Labour Party, even when in Government, had to. So there was Advance (the Bolom Ramgoolam tendency) that came out of the Independence struggle, there was to the right of Advance, another newspaper called Nation (the Satcam Boolell tendency), and to the left Mauritius Today (the Jagatsingh tendency). A fourth newspaper, Mauritius Times, under Bikramsingh Ramlallah, was generally supportive of Labour, but constantly put its generally Fabian and enlightened, but also sometimes very communal, lines forward. It still exists until today. All these newspapers constantly developed the Labour Party’s program – on national politics, social issues of the most thorny nature (drugs and death penalty, abortion rights and marriage laws), and on any number of international issues, too.
The MSM, when it was formed also had its newspaper, The Sun. Every day it had its editorials, too, countering the other parties on clear enough points.
Harish Boodhoo for many years had his own newspaper called Le Socialiste.
Les Verts Fraternelles, over many years had a weekly newspaper.
The PMSD had two right wing newspapers, both were communal and pro-occident, pro-apartheid, and even pro-Le Pen: Le Populaire, the party organ, and Le Cernéen, the newspaper of the oligarchs of the country. They put forward their pro-capitalist ideas boldly. Interestingly, Le Cernéen had the apparently contradictory stand of being in favour of women’s emancipation, while being against working class organizations, and virulently anti-communist, even anti-socialist.
Conclusion
The point of this article is not to glorify days gone by, but to point out the huge degeneration of the institution of the political party.
It is important to know that we can create political programs, not only because we say we can, but also because we, as a society, have done it before. Each political party was robust enough to represent its ideas on a constant basis, in writing, and to recruit members and support on the basis of this written, and always put forward, program.
If, we in LALIT, can create a coherent program that hundreds and thousands of organized people adhere to, based on a regular publication – even one like REVI LALIT today that comes out only bimonthly -- then all the parties may be challenged to follow suit and bring out constant programmatic publications. This way party democracy can have the basis on which to be established.
But, it means individual active thinkers and active doers, deciding to act politically together in a party and around a regular publication, and thereby to rehabilitate the institution of the political party. Why not join us?
LALIT
