The Political Stakes as Elections Approach
12.04.2024
The two main alliances face each other in brittle expectation. The Mauritian electorate can be pitiless, when it swings. Twice there have been elections with no opposition elected at all – in 1982 and 1995 – and other times near wipe-outs, as in 2000.
The present MSM-Linite Militan alliance in Government is betting on its record of how it ran the country for the past five years. But each item of its record has contradictory messages. The Government’s excellent handling of the Covid epidemic in terms of public health policy is pitted against the “Pack and Blister” scandal and other corrupt tenders and contracts during the pandemic. The Government’s increase in pensions and minimum wages has been immensely popular, but is pitted against the rise in prices of basic items – mainly imported – due to the depreciation of the Rupee and the cost of freight in the context of Government’s failure to increase food production to scale. The Government’s winning the Chagos/Diego Garcia ICJ case and yet buckling and offering a lease to the USA for the Island of Diego Garcia, thus opening the way for the UK to re-neg on negotiations. The MSM suffers, too, from the rightly unpopular secrecy surrounding these negotiations as well as the secret Treaty with India over Agalega. The MSM alliance, though it won all the endless, spurious, Trump-like opposition cases right up to the Privy Council over the last general elections supposedly having been “stolen”, is not really able politically to win against the Opposition parties’ attacks on the way elections were run, ludicrous as the attacks were.
This means the reputation of the electoral procedures has been harmed, though on completely invented claims. This, in turn, adds complications for the future.
For example, the Opposition alliance, if it wins, will accept the electoral procedures as fine, and if it loses, will again set off a concatenation of spurious challenges? The degree of irrationality in this situation is dangerous.
And the Opposition alliance is, right now, in tatters. Navin Ramgoolam, the much-challenged and apparently irremovable Labour Party leader of the alliance, who has an indelibly stained image from the video clips of millions in cash – Rupees and brand-new US Dollars – cascading from his Chubby safe, came out and made the unilateral announcement that the sharing of tickets for Labour, MMM and PMSD candidates would be 35-18-7. The PMSD does not agree with 7 it “got”. And the MMM would like to take over those PMSD tickets. Rezistans ek Alternativ waits in the wings to pick up one or two tickets from the Labour Party. Meanwhile, Pravind Jugnauth, the MSM leader, speaking in code, encourages the PMSD to re-join it in time for elections. Or maybe the invitation is to the MMM? Speaking in code is less precise than speaking in human language.
Challenging the MSM government, there are also two or three other fairly important mainstream political parties/alliances organizing to field 60 candidates, or alternatively to pick up a few tickets from part of the Opposition Alliance, if and when it explodes. There is the Linion Moris of Rama Valayden and Dev Sunnasy, and also of Nando Bodha, who sometimes organizes separately, and hopes to become a future spurned MMM’s Prime Ministerial candidate, instead, if necessary. There is the One Moris of Sherry Singh and Bruneau Laurette, the latter now an Evangelical Christian predicateur in the Joshua Ministries, which puts centre-stage somewhat ominously god’s “promise” of Israel to the Jewish people. It is difficult to predict the trajectory of such a set-up. Both men say they intend to be Prime Minister. And there is Roshi Bhadain’s Reform Party, that can affect results in the Beau Bassin and Petite Rivière Constituency where Bhadain himself will stand, now separated from his former ally Patrick Belcourt, who can affect results in the Stanley-Rose-hill Constituency – both men’s candidatures harm the MMM, electorally speaking.
It should not be difficult to put together a political alliance to challenge the outgoing MSM Government on political issues. There are so many vital points that could make for a fine challenge. Unfortunately, the Opposition Parties include none of these issues.
- Stop the selling off of agricultural land as real estate on the international land market. ”. This will control the price of land, as well as maintaining the land for agriculture, and thus avoiding the freight price hikes on food.
- Stop selling Mauritian residence and citizenship to “investors”. This will go together with repealing the amendment to the Citizenship Act, as part of the Immigration Act amendment that attacks the fundamental right of citizenship gained through marriage to a Mauritian. These changes will prevent recolonization of the worst kind – millionaires escaping taxation and conflict and living in gated communities – and stop the fragilization of Mauritian citizenship.
- create jobs in essential productive sectors, like production for food security. Do this by forcing the big land-owners to invest in planting essential crops and processing them, in animal husbandry and processing, and in sustainable fishing and processing. This addresses an array of problems: it creates stable employment, it helps the balance of payments, it can keep prices of essential food down, and it can assure food sovereignty.
- Call on the UK-USA to announce a date for withdrawal from Chagos and closure of their military base on Diego Garcia. Military bases are not only a cause of war, but they are an unnecessary mega-pollluter.
- The Diego Garcia base closure must go together with a formal undertaking by the party to refuse entry of warships to all Mauritian ports – Port Louis, Port Mathurin, Agalega, Diego Garcia and any other potential port – as well as closing the airport to all military airplanes, as part of a commitment to world peace.
