Africa-Press – Mauritius. Over the past couple of decades, a certain pattern seems to have set in on the political front: the rot that begins to eat into the ruling regime towards the end of a second mandate.
This happened when Labour was nearing the completion of its second term, leading to the victory of the next MSM-led government in 2014 and the near-electoral wipe-out of Labour.
Now the MSM is afflicted with the same ill, and there is a clamour among the public to do away with it and to bring back the previous dispensation. Based on their known histories and trajectories, local folklore describes this phenomenon as blanc bonnet-bonnet blanc.
In light of this perception, and to save the country from this burden with its repetitive adverse fallouts on the country and citizens, there is an obvious solution: reduce each electoral term to four years (that is, before the bug sets in), and limit the mandate of the party leader to only two terms.
But of course, this will never happen, because it will need a constitutional amendment which the parties will be the first to oppose vigorously. They will prefer to lose and take in the public opprobrium, then wait out in the desert until they present themselves the next time round – rather than to retire and to act as mentors and guides with a succession plan and fresh team(s), for reasons best known to themselves.
I concede, however, that, (a) this is easier said than done, and (b) I am not familiar with the internal nitty-gritty of political parties that may ‘militate’ against such eventuality. Not everyone can be a Nelson Mandela: he decided to serve only one term, stepping down in glory when it was over.
He received the love and respect of his people, in fact of the whole world for this second magnanimity – the first one being to forgive his apartheid oppressors and invite them to participate in building a new South Africa. That it hasn’t quite come to be is another matter, and surely, he cannot bear the blame for that.
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