What LALIT is facing-Capitalist Alliances around MSM, PT and More
18.09.2024
Mauritius is heading for general elections. And the country, like the world, is in flux. Let’s situate the moment. This way, we can see what LALIT has to bear in mind when we take our decision in a few weeks’ time, at the most, on how to participate in the coming general elections.
World Context
Everything in the realm of Western bourgeois democracy is now politically unstable, as imperialism – the highest stage of capitalism – goes into its death throes. The imperial centre draws into its maelstrom even its far-flung outposts like Israel, busy perpetrating a genocide in full view of its Western handlers as we have been showing in our Genocide Blog, and also draws into this same maelstrom what we will look at today: Mauritius.
On the political front world-wide, and including in Mauritius, we are experiencing forms of political depravity that follow in the wake of the economic crises cascading in a downward spiral. How else could one describe the USA throwing up a leader like Donald Trump to take part in a Presidential debate? And if you can’t see yourself voting for this loon, then the other choice history throws up for the debate is Kamala Harris, she being someone busy perpetrating genocide in Palestine in full view of everyone in the world. How is that for a choice? And if you think, well, the elected assemblies in the USA can control the executive branch, well, think again. Both houses of Congress are controlled by Netanyahu, as seen on TV, too. He pulls the strings and they stand up and clap. He releases them, and they, like obedient dogs, sit. Or, for that matter, how else can history throw up someone like a Boris Johnson as British Prime Minister? Talking about puppets, he was the man that the US sent to torpedo the peace deal already initialed in Turkey between Putin and Zelensky in April 2022? In India, there is a theocracy in power no longer a secular Government. In Argentina there is a complete loon at the helm of a capitalist country. In Africa, so sick are people of French and US capitalist pillage of their resources, they are prepared to support even coup d’etats, not knowing where they are going. People world-wide have seen the regime-change “color revolutions” that the United States plots, via the CIA and the USA’s newer arm, the National Endowment for Democracy discredit capitalist democracy by financing supposed NGOs and commercial newspapers alike to destabilize governments, and are sick of them, too. European countries have over the past 10 years or so been economically ruined by the intentional actions of their ally, the USA. All this to say, that we live in times of dying Western imperialist rule.
In parallel, and perhaps not quite fast enough, there is another newer multi-polar system taking birth. Their economies are all capitalist, but they are not the old Western imperialists, but something else. At this very moment in St Petersburg the BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, plus 5 new member-states the UAE, Ethiopia, Egypt, Iran and Saudi Arabia – have just met to build a new security architecture for a multi-nodal or multi-polar world, while BRICS prepares for its big October summit to be held in Kazan, the capital of the Russian Republic of Tartarstan. This October summit will be a real test.
It is in this dual geopolitical reality – the descent of Western capitalists’ imperial empire and the beginnings of a new multi-centred economic and geopolitical world around BRICS based on the equality of nations and diplomacy – that Mauritian politics is best viewed. This dual reality is also reflected in the doomsday atmosphere of an impending disastrous NATO v. Russia war, a war that may go nuclear, as indeed may the Israeli genocide, as the Israeli state goes further into auto-destruct mode.
Mauritius in this world context
Right now, the British Government has named a senior UK political advisor and negotiator, one Jonathan Powell, to come to an agreement, supposedly by the end of the year, with the Republic of Mauritius after Mauritius confirmed its sovereignty over Chagos including Diego Garcia, all confirmed as part of the Republic, by both the 2019 Advisory Opinion of the ICJ and the near-unanimous vote of the UN General Assembly soon after. This crack negotiator, who resolved the Northern Ireland conflict, has been instructed to put the USA into his loop. This is necessary because the UK, as everyone knows, having stolen the whole of Chagos from Mauritius, proceeded as planned beforehand to then forcibly remove all the Mauritians living there and to dump most of them on the dockside of Port Louis, thus making for a people-free archipelago of which they could then sub-let part of the stolen territory, Diego Garcia, to Britain ally, the USA, for its big military base, one known – to make matters worse – to handle nuclear materials, as well as to hold illegal prisoners for both rendering and for illegal immigration. Right now, the illegal immigrants – the UK-USA who illegally colonize Chagos including Diego Garcia – have taken it upon themselves to imprison people they call “illegal immigrants” – originally from Sri Lanka and whose precarious boat stranded them somewhere nearby.
And, as if to highlight the imminence of major shifts – this week as from 16 September a habeas corpus case – against the British and US authorities – is due to go ahead before British Courts constituted for this very purpose on Diego Garcia. The Sri Lankan illegal immigrants have challenged the UK and US, the real illegal immigrants, to come and stand trial before the British Supreme Court. A few months ago a first hearing was due. However, it was, incredibly, banned by the United States armed forces!
How is all that for instability? And madness?
At the same time, the USA is right now building a huge bunker of a supposed “Embassy” for itself Mauritius. The US under-secretary of State, Richard Verner, came and laid foundation stones for a monstrous one-third of a billion Dollar new building just over a year ago. It now rises, the visible spectre of a political threat, right there, plumb in the middle of the main Island of Mauritius.
Mauritius, meanwhile, earlier this month announced via the Bank of Mauritius site: “The Governor of the Bank of Mauritius (BoM) Mr Harvesh Kumar Seegolam G.C.S.K. and the Governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBC) Mr Pan Gongsheng recently signed a Bilateral Currency Swap Agreement (BCSA) of RMB 2 billion/MUR 13 billion between the two central banks.” This is, the site says, “to promote bilateral trade and investment between the two countries.” And its effective period is 3 years, to be extended on mutual consent. [RMB referring to Chinese currency.] The USA will take this as a Mauritian threat to participate in an act the US considers blasphemous: de-dollarization.
And Mauritius, as always, remains close – economically, militarily and socially – to India.
It is in this reality that the general elections loom.
Political Situation
Let us look at the two so-called “big alliances” that vie for power. We will start with the Opposition alliance because its recent break-up led to things that only make sense for both alliances if we deal with it first.
When the Labour and MMM parties came together two election cycles ago in 2014, the alliance ended in an unintended festival of mutual destruction. But, they have joined together once again – having “no choice” – in preparation to challenge the MSM alliance in the general elections looming right now.
Labour, the MMM and the PMSD originally joined up in a trilateral agreement, although originally it had been rightly considered impossible by the MMM even to consider allying with Ramgoolam, after the “Kofor” scandal. This alliance was called for, curiously, by none other than the ReA (Rezistans ek Alternativ) who saw nothing strange in giving their supposedly left-wing credentials to Navin Ramgoolam with his grave charges of keeping liquid Rupees and Dollars (in series) in his house, to Paul Bérenger who sold out his working class politics in 1981, and the PMSD, the former party of the oligarchs, that was against Independence. Just before Subron called for this opposition alliance, he had been chanting “BZTD” alongside Bruneau Laurette in the streets of Port Louis. Anyway, initially Ashok Subron was not, himself, part of the alliance he unexpectedly called for. He was, or pretended to be, merely the enabler. So, that was how we got to the original triple alliance.
The PMSD, however, instead of acting like glue for all three, ended up acting like the opposite. The triple alliance got so unstable, that the PMSD left altogether, or was booted out – it is still not clear which. Labour and the MMM grabbed some PMSD members, newly formed into Nouveaux Democrates, and kept them in the alliance. But the PMSD, itself, left the Alliance. It was then called Alliance de L’Espoir. Vain hope.
Labour and the MMM were clearly shaken when the PMSD left. We did not really understand why they were so shaken. However, we soon learned that it was not just the PMSD that had left the alliance. It seems that part of what LALIT calls the “historic bourgeoisie” – major funders and backers – left the alliance with the PMSD, including, it seems, none other than those around the Commercial Bank. Even L’Express newspaper at once cooled off against the alliance. Eminence grise Subash Gobin left the L’Express and turned up, sans transition, as political commentator on Radio Plus and Le Defi publications. Meanwhile, the Mauritius Turf Club, once the very symbol of the oligarchs, abandoned its “opposition” to Jugnauth’s regime, and, with the guidance of the PMSD or vice versa, is on its way back to running Champ de Mars, while businessman Lee Shim, who ran the horse races, is out of favour.
All this left Labour, the MMM and the rump of the PMSD called ND more than shaken.
Come to think of it, any self-respecting capitalist in his right mind would hesitate to hand over wads of money to a leader like Navin Ramgoolam, having seen Rs 220 million end up in a safe in his house after the 2014 elections. Handing money to Bérenger raises the problem that the MMM may leave the PT sooner than they think, perhaps before the elections if things go badly. So, maybe without the PMSD there in the alliance, capitalist backers felt they had no-one to make solemn promises to, let alone anyone to hand over dodgy money to.
Such are the problems that plague dying capitalism’s political system – what we call bourgeois democracy. At least it does become clear what we in LALIT mean when we talk about “bourgeois” democracy. In the USA, the arms lobbies, the oil lobbies, the Israel lobbies, are also clearly exposed as grave-diggers of bourgeois democracy.
So, anyway, all this goes some way to explain the glee with which Ramgoolam and Bérenger, not to mention Richard Duval, opened their arms to Ashok Subron, the initiator of the alliance. When he came and put out his hand, asking for three tickets, they took him to be a savior, and pretty easily gave Subron put two tickets into Subron’s hand. One for himself, of course, in Number 4. One for Babita Thanoo, a little known activist, in Number 8. They await a third ticket for Kuggan Parapen. But, meanwhile Ashok Subron, Stephan Gua and David Sauvage stand outside the gates of Ramgoolam’s mansion, each one a cat that got the cream, and talk about the spectacular “engouement” for the alliance that “the people” express. This term is an accurate description. Here is what Cambridge says “engouement” is, when not meaning “being choked”. It means a “craze, noun, a (usually temporary) fashion; great (but temporary) enthusiasm”. It means infatuation, which in turn means superficial and/or temporary sexual or romantic interest. Subron’s allies, too, in their alliance now use the term “engouement” publicly.
ReA members are somewhat shamefaced about their future actions against the communal self-classification. This has for the 20 years of their existence been their single-issue battle. They may now, to please Ramgoolam and Bérenger, classify themselves under protest. It is not easy for his new allies to accept them drawing lots as LALIT candidates do and always have done, nor writing down “General Population” as the Supreme Court told LALIT should be done when a candidate is unable or unwilling to self-classify. The Court also said, and the Privy Council confirmed this, that the elected Parliament should remove this classification from the political sphere as soon as possible, and that implies a political not legal struggle. It is not enough to use slogans and little media stunts. It takes patience, hard political work at the grassroots, debate and a clear understanding of what is at stake. It also takes ruthless honesty, and not the kind of deception that characterized the ReA cases over the years. En passant, unfortunately the only reporter in the country that wrote thorough analyses to expose the repeated duplicity of the ReA cases was Iqbal Khan, who is no longer at L’Express.
Anyway, we are on the verge of a quadruple alliance PT-MMM-ND-ReA, under a new name. Alliance de L’Espoir is now buried. And a new incarnation, “Alliance du changement” has replaced it. “Changement” is an appropriate word to choose, just like “engouement”. “Changement” means “anything but not what is”. It involves no definition of what kind of change. Not even a vague hint about “valeurs”.
The Government Alliance
The minute the PMSD was out of the Opposition Alliance, it was known that it would gravitate towards an alliance with the MSM. It has.
But the alliance has not yet been concretized.
However, during the process of gravitating towards an alliance, it is causing instability on another front. As well as the PMSD, the MSM has two other allies – the Platform Militant of Obeegadoo and Muvman Patriot of Ganoo – and the Muvman Liberater of Collendavelloo. So, there, too, there are problems. If the PMSD gets enough tickets, these other two allies can’t and won’t. And the MSM agents are using this moment to get their way, too. Now, with the PMSD present, a much more structured party than the other two allies, and a more urban party that needs to have more tickets in order to prove its value to the MSM which is more rural, the two other allies are feeling humiliated.
The MSM – in particular through the MBC-TV – has used religious organizations and communalo-religious groups to try to strengthen its political base. We have seen the religification of the MBC to an extreme extent. Some evenings, almost the entire news bulletin is about rituals of one sort or another. This is multi-communalism of a dangerous kind. The MBC actually houses religious places within its premises! And then shows them in action. Now Father Jocelyn Gregoire is again active in and around the MSM, even if only “spiritually”, as he puts it. And the dishing out of what ought to be commonly owned land to each different communalo-religious group has led to all manner of irrational conflicts, as can be expected from this kind of politics. The recent fights around “Rann nou nou later!” have seen the MSM regime use violent repression.
All this to say that as we are on the verge of a general election, both alliances are still in a state of some flux. Both alliances look as though they are unlikely to last longer than is necessary for their own sort-term survival. We are dealing with desperate men. Jugnauth has price increases and lack of a future for young people plaguing his political future. Ramgoolam has the image of his “kofor” regurgitating those hundreds of millions of Rupee and Dollar bills plaguing his. Bérenger and his gradual fall in popularity since 1981 has been irreversible. Duval with his party cut in two. Subron with no future as an electoralist man with a dead-end to his judicial fights to stand for elections without self-classfying, after having lacked the courage to take on the best-loser system, itself.
Once elections are over, many of us are realizing, there is a high chance of new alliances being formed after the results.
Other parties
There are other parties expected to line up candidates in all, or many constituencies. And this is not new. However, there has been a steady movement away from the two main ever-changing alliances.
Linion Moris
Rama Valayden and Nando Bodha’s Linion Moris, which also includes 100% Citoyens, Tan Yan, Barbier, Sylvio Michel and others, is preparing for a full slate. They have some support, and with three former Ministers have some political base.
Roshi Bhadain
Roshi Badain’s Reform Party clearly has proper “electoral” organization at a neighbourhood level in some constituencies at least. Since he left the MSM – where he was a prominent Minister – he seems to have access to a lot of resources, including money from abroad, and also people at neighbourhood level who knock on doors. They get their potential electors to check that their names are on Electoral Registers constituted each year. They have neighbourhood agents, and also quite a following on social media amongst the class of cybercity workers.
Cehl Meeah
Cehl Meeah often takes part in elections, earlier as Hizbullah and then as Front Solidarite Morisien, and he uses electoral politics to demonstrate his power within his community. He seems to get his power by linking religious issues with political ones. He is candidate in the by-elections due soon, if the National Assembly is not dissolved sooner. He will no doubt align candidates in the general elections.
In the scandal about the Rs 6 million dollar donation from Saudi Arabia that may or may not be “missing”, which neither ambassador Shawkutally Soodhun nor Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth are clearing up, Cehl Meeah has come out in all his fury against Soodhun. Listening to him going off his rocker on social media sites is of serious concern. He, like the other non-Parliamentary opposition parties in this list, is capable of imposing his bizarre games on the electorate.
Bruneau Laurette and Sherry Singh
Though this unlikely tandem has been somewhat quiet, they nevertheless present some political power and they threaten to share Prime Ministership, which implies they intend to field many candidates.
Bruneau Laurette, who was leader of the post Wakashio demonstrations – at its biggest with 100,000 people present in Port Louis – and has since become a “predikater” of the Joshua Ministries, according to his Facebook account. There are a few different Christian evangelical sects with this name, and they all seem to be North American Zionist Christians. Curiously, the Book of Joshua is the key text used by Israeli extreme right-wing, from Moshe Dayan onwards, until today. This text, together with the Book of Samuel, is used as the supposed justification for settlements and for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the land Israel colonizes. Sherry Singh used to be Pravind Jugnauth’s right-hand man, and when he was head of Mauritius Telecom, together they set up the decentralized MUGA clubs, where young people get sports facilities. This gives him some neighbourhood experience. But the two men fell out when Singh exposed what he called a “sniffing” operation at MT. Singh was then, as if by MSM revenge, charged with various serious matters including fraud and corruption, the two main charges having since been kicked out by Magistrates.
En avant Maurice
It is also worth mentioning Patrick Belcourt and his En Avant Maurice, although he is not yet aligned with any alliance. He has a considerable electoral, if not political weight, in one constituency, Stanley-Rose-Hill. no. 19.
LALIT
So, all this is what LALIT is facing as the election looms.
We may field candidates – even in this somewhat bizarre moment of world history and national history – or we may, without candidates, defend our program, that has been, and is still being published as we finalize it. For LALIT, elections are a tactical, not strategic, issue. We will deliberate and let you know.
LALIT
15.09.24
