Africa-Press – Mauritius. These are the snippets of information and speculation around the proposals of the ministerial committee responsible for looking into electoral reform, the conclusions of which will have to be known no later than May 24 in anticipation of the ‘constitutional case’ lodged by Resistans ek Alternativ, which are getting attention these days.
But it is difficult to see the Government being able to mobilize a three-quarters majority to pass amendments along the lines of what has filtered through in terms of reform proposals.
What do you think ? Yvan Martial: “Grab the attention”. . . that’s saying a lot. Logic would dictate that we are interested in the next Legislative elections just six months before the inevitable deadline.
However, in Mauritius in politics, a week is a long time. We are dealing with weather-vane politicians, caring about the given word like their first socks, to say nothing more down-to-earth.
The MSM-ML will imitate the PTr of Navin and will get away with a trick: renewal of the exceptional permission given to recalcitrant candidates not to declare beforehand their Mauritian specificity hindo-, sino-, islamo-, creole-.
Sad to death. But this is our country. Let’s not say bad things about it, especially in front of strangers. Let us proudly assume our Mauritianity despite many imperfections.
At least we don’t have Donald Trump as president. There are those who are worse off than us. The parliamentary recipe, to obtain a majority of three quarters of the votes necessary for a constitutional amendment, exists.
It is enough to negotiate, with credible adversaries, the means of concocting it, with serious chances of success. This requires a spirit of compromise, if not concessions.
I take a step towards you and you return the favor, and so on until we reach an honorable agreement, above all not dissatisfying our respective bases and tendencies. Let’s take Seewooosagur Ramgoolam as an example.
In 1946, in the midst of constitutional debates, compared to which the India-Dependency and Integrate-Ration squabble was bogus, he granted the oligarchs and conservatives a 10-year reprieve before demanding universal suffrage, in exchange for their requirement of a certificate of completion of primary studies to become an elector before the Legislative elections of August 1948.
Not only will electoral victory smile on the progressive candidates, but this spirit of compromise earned Chacha the respect of a dying sugar oligarchy.
What would we have become today without this spirit of compromise of 1946, in the midst of the colonialist and therefore English period? MSM, MMM, PTr, PMSD and other small groups must remember that they are no longer politically … virgins.
They have, more than once, concubinated together. They will live together again. Maybe even next year. You will forgive me for not feeling sorry for their supposed incompatibility of temper, concerning an electoral reform concocted by some but not by all. Be serious. They had better admit they have a badass for any electoral reform.
* Beyond the need to respond to the demands of the UN Human Rights Committee to remove all forms of discrimination from our electoral laws, it is obvious that any reform proposal from the current Government will have its immediate objectives in sight, but also those of the long term.
Do you see the current MSM leader more accommodating, given the current circumstances of his party on the chessboard, vis-à-vis the publicly expressed demands of the MMM leader?
“Need to respond to UN requirements”…And I believed that Mauritius was a sovereign state…Thank you for reminding me that we are still an IMF/BM colony. It is true that we are “screwed” if, after the 24/7 taps, we are also closed off those of potential donors.
It is not only the ban on potential legislative candidates from proudly proclaiming their Mauritianity that constitutes racial discrimination in the eyes of UN shopkeepers, false apostles known for their hypocrisy because they are absolutely incapable of rendering justice to martyred peoples.
as in Palestine (Gaza which is gassed with impunity), in Sudan, in Yemen, in Kurdistan, to say nothing of the 60 million slaves that their statistics list, in a global indifference, guilty, despite many rituals in days yearly servitude allegedly abolished.
What about all the machos treating their wives and daughters worse than slaves? When it comes to electoral reform, our politicians are players and not referees, even less match commissioners or organizers.
That they play by respecting the rules in force that others (constitutional lawyers by profession) impose on them, so as not to receive any red card, nor to be sent back, not in “caro canes” but to the locker room, to mourn their lost eligibility.
How do you expect me to take seriously players who allow themselves to write the rules of the game, to modify them during the game, sometimes even with retroactive effects? How do you expect such abuses of power not to serve to protect, consolidate, above all dynastic interests?
And speaking of electoral reform, let me tell you that we are wrong, reducing this to the “Best Losers” and the “minimum dose of proportional representation”.
This is tackling the problem from the wrong end. The main thing is that each vote provides us with the best possible National Assembly. One that is capable, in the essential spirit of compromise, of legislating while always promoting the higher interests of the nation.
The best electoral system is the one capable of providing us every time with ideal, irreproachable National Assemblies, preserving the unaltered confidence of the population. The number of elected officials does not matter, if quality takes precedence over quantity.
Better is a limited number of legislators, who can always legislate in their soul and conscience, rather than a plethora including “running-boute” or sexual harassers on social networks.
Let us pity these political leaders who are obliged to tolerate them! The racial fights of January 1968 shattered the balance expected by our 20 constituencies-Banwell of Mauritius.
We are fighting like ragpickers on a new number of corrective deputies and elected by proportional representation but almost no one cares about the current exercise of sealing the territorial limits of our 20 constituencies.
Let’s multiply our corrective deputies even more, if that can reassure voters who still think in terms of “sectarianism” before the “nation”, but above all let’s create 20 constituencies-human communities, CENTERED around a large agglomeration, already bringing them together naturally because they are at the heart of their usual administrative procedures and purchases.
Let’s finish with constituencies, starting in Surinam and ending in Cité-Kennedy, or even the one where voters have to go through Mahébourg to get to Rose-Belle.
Until when will the 21st Rodriguaise have to settle for two deputies when it has more voters than two Mauritian constituencies? Do our electoral reformers even know how to count? It is not our electoral system that needs to be reformed.
We must first remove the brakes that prevent certain leaders from designing anything other than the sole interest of their electorate, their party, if not their family, their dynasty.
How can we talk about electoral reform without asking the question of whether we should not grant the right to vote to our brothers and sisters in the diaspora because they are not “jacots in whom to entrust a razor would be dangerous”? .
* It is asserted in government circles that, in the absence of a reform that would meet the expectations of the MMM, the possibilities of an electoral arrangement for the MSM with the mauves will dwindle.
A great responsibility therefore rests on the shoulders of the Minister Mentor, who historically has so far opposed the introduction of proportional representation in our electoral system, because it must facilitate things.
What do you think ? Proportional representation suffers from a misunderstanding dating back to the 1960s. Progressives trampled on it in the stupid belief that it only served the interests of political adversaries (Conservatives) and not their own.
With a minimum of proportional representation, Chacha Ramgoolam would have led the opposition after June 11, 1982. We are no longer in 1960 but in 2018.
What matters is that our National Assembly can tomorrow count within it politicians doing their evidence on the ground, such as Jack Bizlall, Ram Seegobin, Lindsay Collen, Ashok Subron, Harish Boodhoo, Jane Ragoo, non-politicians like Koomara Venkatasawmy. In short, distinguished Mauritians, capable of restoring their letters of nobility to our parliamentary debates.
But how could political leaders want to improve the quality, possibly contradictory, of our parliamentary debates, when they are absolutely incapable of generating the slightest credible debate within their partisan bodies? They are too anchored to their Sacred “Unique Thought”.
The pinnacle of political debate in their blind eyes is their endless monologues, during weekly press briefings or endless televised soliloquies. When will we be able to vote for political leaders worthy of the Admirable People that we form?
* Whether there is electoral reform or not, it seems that the Prime Minister would like to see his term through to the end.
What is it for, do you think? Trying to turn the tide after the three years of the current mandate marked by multiple cases, or is it to create the ‘feel-good factor’ necessary in anticipation of the general elections with the presentation of one or the next two budgets?
It is normal for any democratically elected government to want to complete its mandate. The date of legislative or presidential elections is even set in advance in some democracies.
Let us think of the United States (beginning of November of any leap year) or France (end of April/beginning of May of any luster but for Presidential only).
It is just as normal for an intelligent electorate to favor the alternation of power if only to allow those of the “caro-canes” to prove the veracity of the serious accusations made by them against the government that we have (perhaps be recklessly) acclaimed a luster earlier.
Our recent political history unfortunately proves to us that at the end of the five-year term, very few are the charges endorsed by a court of law and disqualifying for good or temporarily unworthy politicians.
How many corrupt politicians languish in jail? Our political leaders are not the last downpour. They know that governing us is neither fun nor easy. But we shouldn’t be promised the moon, in December 2014.
They taught us to “fire mam”. If we obey them, they will have only themselves to blame. In any good restaurant, the “feel good factor” is not felt in the kitchen but at the table, in the restaurant, if our plate matches the tempting offer of the government program menu. Resign and give way to others if you can’t deliver the good.
* By the way, what do you think of the Government’s popularity rating? We can understand that the hunt for Navin Ramgoolam and the other Labour, the management of certain files such as that of the BAI and the style specific to Sir Anerood Jugnauth did not help matters; they even produced the opposite effect, which made some within the MSM say: SAJ was the best agent of the PTr.
Have things changed since Pravind Jugnauth took the helm? The government’s popularity rating is of interest only to those currently sitting in cabinet.
We will obviously understand them, if they tell us that they are in their little shoes: only a year and a half before the next election; only 18 months to make us forget many missteps.
For ordinary mortals, this Government or another … What difference? The electorate will judge in the next ballot. Will we do it objectively and scientifically, impartially and fairly? Hard to say.
We are numerous. Nearly a million subscribers. No one is responsible for the votes of others. From the ballot box will emerge a new majority, a new government. Will it be worse or better than the current one? Than those we have suffered previously? I don’t know if Bhai Anerood is the best Labor Party agent.
On the other hand, hardly a television news happens without Pravind Kumar feeling obliged to speak at great length about someone, reminding us a lot of his predecessor.
We hardly ever see him on television anymore, but we often remember him. You wouldn’t slander someone so much if you didn’t fear him so much. At least, we know he is alive, capable of giving some people nightmares, not sleeping the sleep of the just despite the halo with which they willingly adorn themselves.
* If the Government is so unpopular as the opposition parties, especially Labour, say it is, do you see the PTr being able to take advantage of this?
Only every voter can answer such a question and even when entering the voting booth and choosing three candidates, hoping that they will not make them blush with shame afterwards.
Another aberration of our electoral system. Put a cross on three particularly odious candidates who shame our political class and do not be surprised to learn that they were acclaimed hands down.
We are reduced to watching cholera powerlessly boast of having overcome the plague. That our main parties derive maximum benefit from our chronic inability to compel them to show the flattering image we had of them at their beginnings, there is no shadow of a doubt.
Would we be more intelligent than we would have voted systematically for candidates, if not opposition, at least for valid candidates having, barring a miracle, no chance of being elected, especially in the absence of any proportional representation, even in infinitesimal doses.
If we want to be sincere with ourselves, we would easily recognize that the parliamentarians who are most useful to us are those of the opposition, especially extra-parliamentary.
They have no equal, without any immunity, to unearth at least one juicy scandal per week. There is a catch, however… Even the candidates in caro-cannes dispute this superior political utility in the spans of the opposition.
Do not we say that they aspire to take the place of any minister or government ally suffering from disgrace, not necessarily linguistic. We cover our opposition parliamentarians with the eyes of Chimene. They don’t care. If they turn around like the Iscariot, they’re mad at us to death, because we care about their ministerial efforts like a fig.
* What is your opinion of the impact of the various political rallies that the PTr organizes across the country? Labor has been in Saint Pierre and Fond du Sac so far, and it seems that the current is still flowing between the PTr and the electorate.
The victory in No. 18 is also significant insofar as a victory in this constituency would always be, according to analysts of the elections in Mauritius, the harbinger of a greater victory at the national level.
. Impact… you say? Wouldn’t it be better to talk about investments here? Imperfect is necessarily the contentment of the cheater.
Sacha Guitry will agree. He will never know how much impact he would have had without cheating and what earned him his cheating. Popularity is indisputable when lovers and enthusiasts do their utmost to join, by their own means, the leader they cherish.
But if we offer transport, briyani, good oil, seaside picnic, the most chilled lover no longer knows if his presence sincerely depends on him or if it owes something to the marginal advantages thus lavished.
To each, his attendance token. We resist everything except temptation. I can’t see Fond-du-Coffre voting Pince-Monseigneur on the pretext that Arvin triumphs without glory because without danger at Quatre-Bornes, on a day of total eclipse of the Sun, yet so imperial.
In the next election will we think more of Arvin triumphing for lack of opposition to No 18 or biting the dust in a region as super-humid as Rose-Belle? Who would have said on December 10, 2014 that 40+40 = caro-cannes? Above all, I foresee an inevitable malaise descending on our political class after a Malaysian electoral victory by an imperially dashing nonagenarian.
Revenge of Martyr. I remember Chacha Ramgoolam confiding in Walter, at the end of the funeral of Len Williams, our last British born governor: “To conné Harold… Mo fine well thought out… Mo believe mo too zen to be reduced to the Reduced.
He’s not the only one who thinks he’s not crumbling enough not to go back down into the arena instead of giving way to young people. This Malaysian electoral victory is a bath of youth, the benefits of which we are only just beginning to fear.
I hear voices from beyond the grave, or almost… Long live gerontocracy! * However, things are not as simple as that, argue some political observers, because it will be enough for the MSM to contract a good alliance with the MMM to give itself the best chance in 2019 or 2020.
Your opinion? I thought that of the 40+40 alliance. At Democracy Watch and Radio One, people still laugh at my immeasurable naivety. To tack, we tacked.
Is it for the best? Nothing less certain… Let us repeat again to the electorate. We vote at our own risk…For better or for worse. Who instinctively apprehends the worst is rarely disappointed.
* But there is also another uncertainty that could upset all political data: the MedPoint affair before the Privy Council. Just like those concerning Navin Ramgoolam. What do you think ?
A British born bookmaker told me: Normally the Privy Council of Elizabeth of Saxe-Coburg manages not to embarrass a head of state or government of a former colony even native.
But the Chagos could be a difficult handicap to overcome, during the final sprint, a stone’s throw from the finish post. The victorious jerk risks failing at the moment of the ephestasis (a term certainly eschatological but taken here in its journalistic sense).
As for Navin, our good Admirable People are beginning to believe that our sleuths, charged with investigating his fate, care more about their fingernails unless they have wandered off forever into some double-locked vaults.
We have so little news from them. . . If they reappear before the next election, that would surprise us. . . And if they still respect the torturous pace followed so far, we can hardly see them winning any race against the clock even legal.
But let Navin not rejoice lightly. Chi va piano, va sano… Arrival perhaps but after… 2024… if the government alternative is still valid… What seems certain, however, is that Paul Bérenger will manage to weather the storm that the MMM is going through with the challenges (coming) from Jeeha, Obeegadoo, Labelle and others – as always.
Evictions are scheduled, and he will keep his hands on the MMM, right? Nothing is more uncertain than the certain. . . Is time playing in favor of the irremovable leader of the MMM? I do not remind you of the extreme pleasure of Nikita Khrushchev and the cellmates, if not of the politburo, learning, waking up, after an evening washed down with vodka, the disappearance of Stalin, forgetting to wake up, after an evening so crazy.
Hadn’t he forced the unfortunate Nikita to mime the bear dance, arousing the hilarity of the inevitable blessed yes-yes? This hardly prevented the latter from directing the communist paradise on fire and even from completing the de-Stalinization of this Bolshevik Eden, until 1964, the year of its anathematization by the Brezhnev/Kosygin tandem.
What are Jeeha, Labelle, Obeegadoo, compared to the big names who previously had to lift the package? But when a voracious moth attacks hard, there is cause for concern.
At least that’s what we learn in business management courses, chapter “reducing your market share”. We are here on political ground. Other sector of activity(ies), other customs.
Let us be careful not to summarize militant activism in the weekly press briefing and a few central committee or assembly of delegates ceremonies (by whom?). The Politburo is thinking. And as Stalin said: the Politburo is me!
In the meantime, the worrying aircraft carrier of the ember years has become a frigate, not even dashing, an ill-advised aviso, Amar attached to Hôtel Henessy… And who says Ebène makes us think of Dodo… Who says Park, thinks Jurassic.
Until when will the MMM have enough members to satisfy the gargantuan appetite of Chief Expulsion. That’s the question? The MMM, so gerontocratic, lacks the resurgence capacity of other serious competitors.
This is what it costs to snub the rodère-boutte and other careerists. Our good Admirable People are getting tired more and more of scratched records from repeated listening.
Our political parties are like our flamboyants. One day we will wake up and they will be gone. They won’t bloom again, without even worrying about it. We can’t even blame the deforestation named Metro-Express. At least we will have aged together.
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