By
Prof. John H. Stanfield II
Africa-Press – Mauritius. The present political crisis going on in Mauritius reminds me of a peculiar universal trait among politicians and their parties all over the world. It appears, weirdly speaking, that as soon as politicians and their parties get into power, they stop reading and paying attention to the news, especially about global affairs. They sink back into their traditions and act like nothing has changed, that they won, and now all they need to do is to go back to business as usual and coast.
They have become accustomed to electorates being passive and thus, not being interested in having them be accountable to their campaign promises. They think they can join hands with others to get into office and then go back on their collaborative covenants once in power. They just talk about coalitions but really don’t believe in compromise. So, when the going gets rough, the tough get going, showing they are not that strong after all. They just want to win; they want that power to get into office and then slide. It is as if they live in a cave, in some wonderland, thus, without touch of reality. And then, they don’t see the writing on the wall.
It is no more like even 15 years ago if you are one vying for state power. As said by many about the Mauritius political chaos, things are different now than in past political squabbles. The same rivals of yesteryears who have been recycled this time around have found themselves in a brand-new world, which they have yet to grasp but will fall victim to unless they wake up and smell something, be it coffee, tea, or dung.
Just reading the news of what is happening around Africa—the failed coalition between the DA and ANC in South Africa, the coups in Francophone West Africa, youth protests in Kenya and in Nigeria, the falling apart of cherished democracy in Botswana—all because the people on the bottom and even the middle and elite classes are sick and tired.
The civil societies in Africa which have long been ignored or bought off by political elites are sick and tired and are showing it by throwing out their leaders who are so arrogant in blissful laziness in their presumptions about the masses they feel they can belittle and not take care of once they are in power. Madagascar’s military, like that in Gabon, even had the military do soft coups to allow someone with decent governance principles to come on in and rule properly.
To pompously sit down and be arrogant non-listeners is precisely why the impossible is happening. Long-time ruling parties are being defeated. Citizens like those in Zimbabwe celebrated ousters of state leaders by sitting on tanks and dancing in front of them.
And the elected elite just don’t bother to read about such things. They believe such things as losing and doing so big will not happen. And when it does, such as here, when for the third time in the history of Mauritius the opposition won so big there is no opposition, they do nothing but resist the change they promise, including breaking promises that they coalesced to get into power. And those who are the weaker parties, rather than huddling together and confronting the stronger, whimper and leave rather than understanding democracy is hard work and needs to be struggled for each day.
I am tempted to say this tendency to not rule in accountable ways, after defeating a predecessor and his/her party, has to do with a flaw in democracy ideology in the so-called developing democracy world, which views democracy as taking a pill after which you have democracy. As if democracy is not a daily struggle that ceases when you stop pressing for it as a cultural norm, which stays active and alive as long as we press on for it to continue to happen.
But even in the United States as a mature democracy, we see what happens when citizens take their democracy for granted, making it a lollipop to such an extent that we get careless about who we allow to lead us, and we all come to suffer.
The present political crisis in Mauritius is paralyzed since the two-family dynasty merry-go-round has stopped, paralyzed by the leaving of the Deputy Prime Minister, a marginalized political party leader when not an excluded third wheel of in national Governance matters as a White, non–Hindu who is tired of being ignored on critical policy matters and insulted by unilateral decisions by the Prime Minister. You would have thought they would have been prepared for disagreements and found strategies of consensus building, given the golden opportunity handed to them by the electorate not to have an opposition in the way of doing the good things they promised to those who elected them to office.
They seem to forget that in going their separate ways, not compromising, and not caring for anything except feathering their own nest, they have created a vacuum for a new politic to emerge. It is only hoped that what emerges to replace the old and tired and obsolete way of doing politics will bring along something good and not bad.
This is because the world does not need Mauritius. Not with its soaring costs of living with ridiculously priced food and giving food and clothing-related trade amenities to international traders while killing their own local businesspeopleand expanding poverty, which contradicts its gloating over its upper-middle-class global measures of development and its overly expensive beach resorts and malls, let alone empty overpriced housing developments for foreigners not coming. Not with its blatant age, caste, family, gender, and religious discrimination, which wastes human resources, sustains the increasingly destructive brain drain, and encourages the exploitation of immigrants.
The assumption that domestic and global affairs can be dictated mostly by Whites and Indians of Mauritius or naturalized citizenship while excluding significantly those who are of African and other Asian ancestry is an absurdity, resulting in inabilities to build durable business, cultural, and educational relationships in African and in Asian countries beyond India. This is because it is becoming more than apparent to political and economic elites in Africa and in Asia, let alone in other parts of the world, that the emperor in Mauritius—the sunny beaches and nice weather and the glossy-covered tourism brochures—has no clothes. As other Indian Ocean states, especially Madagascar, continue to move towards cleaning up their governance challenges, the big money will flee from here and go there.
Mauritius needs to join the world more than it’s paradise island mythology and boasting about its questionable measures of global development. If Mauritius is to survive this political crisis, its political establishment is going to have to be through the infusion of new blood, either through—though doubtfully—the old guard understanding the need to become much more willing to allow more youth leaders of diverse cultural and ideological backgrounds to come to the governance helm, with fresh ideas in keeping with 2025 and beyond; not just demographic diversity, that is, but strong diverse best-practice ideas in how to govern for the good of all, not just a few. Or, more of a possibility, the development of a new winnable political party, which is composed of bits and pieces of the dominant old family who dominated musical chairs parties and new constituencies, to move the nation forward in significant 21st-century ways.
Otherwise, as one civic leader put it a couple of years ago, Mauritius will just become a nation of old people and drug addicts if the elite governance continues to be so obsolete and self-serving, driving away its best minds in most cases, economically exploiting its impoverished population, and so blatantly and unapologetically multidimensionally discriminating.
If that is what the elite public and private sectors and civil society leadership want, keep the crisis up, and that is what the nation will get, and sooner than one realizes. Always, but certainly more currently, if you don’t read and see the writing on the wall, especially the social media talking heads, you lose and lose much more than you think. Mauritius is in the world and of it, not above it as some would like to argue. Just open your eyes and see what is happening in the world regionally, the continents the nation bridges, and the rest of the world. Look up and see.
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