Sunday, October 26, 2014

Mauritian Democracy Competitive Again

From a very low point a few months back in our Parliament when Berenger was trying to prevent Jugnauth Jr. from doing one of the things we send MPs there: debate important pieces of legislation. In that particular case the dumb amendment proposed by Sithanen. We then had that period where Ramgoolam and Berenger announced their alliance and told us that they were sure to win all the seats in the next general elections as their parties represented 40% of the electorate each. With Berenger adding that when that would happen we could count on him to not bully the little -- I guess, extra-parliamentary -- parties. Yeah, right.

That was kind of funny of course because when an alliance had won all the seats -- in 1982 and 1995 -- it got only 65% of the votes. Not 80%. And the next election is not going to be an average election. Nope. We're talking of a really wicked plan to screw up three things: our system of government, our electoral system and the livelihoods of a majority of Mauritians. So a month ago it seemed that there was a pretty good chance that lalyans pep tuni would not even get 3/4 of the seats. But that was before the national rallies of October 12.

Since then everybody knows it's going to be a tight election. And thank God it is.

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