Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Ase Fer Bandar

Sinon nu pu fini kuma Banda Aceh. 

Tuesday, February 27, 2018

A More Relevant Talk By Malene Rydahl



Than the one I bumped into. I wonder if she has been briefed about what has been going on in Mauritius for more than a decade now. For sure Denmark does a lot of things right. But the 'happiest' people on Earth don't have the lowest suicide rate in the world. Good points to take from this presentation. It will remind you a bit of Ken.

Monday, February 26, 2018

Sithanen Toohrooh To Increase By Over Rs300 Billion in 2018

That's based on the 8% growth he promised back in 2006 before flattening our tax structure. We never got the 8% in any of the 12 years since he started breaking the economy with so much dedication. In fact we didn't get half of that rate in eight of these years and we haven't clocked 4% in the last seven consecutive years. It's true that he had also promised to make poverty history by 2015 back in 2007 only to recently push back this date to 2026 or 2031. I know people who have started to believe in astrology after listening to his forecasts. Mind you that was before he predicted a 60-0 for the general elections of December 2014.

300 billions is our GDP for the whole of 2010. That's the equivalent of 15 Lepep Trams or very roughly two $5bn Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) systems – the heavy-duty underground. Given that the toohrooh was Rs1.2tn at the end of 2017 it will therefore hit a trillion-and-half rupees before we welcome an election year.

Friday, February 23, 2018

After Navin Leaves

The party which turns 82 today will have to go back and have a good look at its glorious past. Especially the one which ended in June 1982. The one which played the biggest role in improving the lot of the many by rolling out our welfare state. The party which was the driving force behind the independence movement. The one who proved Meade wrong. The great party who was against proportional representation and party lists. Or double candidacies.

But don't count on Arvin to do that. He's no different from Navin who not only actively revised the history of the LP when he was in power but invents new Party DNA when he's not. The LP might not be able to do this for some time. That's OK as voters are becoming increasingly sophisticated and they will eventually get what Mauritius needs.

Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Two Nobels Were Not Mistaken About Mauritius

Kot zot pu kav vo nu bann dirizan sa!
Camille Moutoo at a SELEX dinner

Certainly not James Meade who submitted his famous 1960 facts-based report a few months after visiting Mauritius. Incidentally he landed here exactly eight years before 12.3.68 and about ten days after a pretty little thing called Carol had spent five days checking us out. Start to read the clear report and it won't take you long to appreciate – if you'd been led to believe otherwise – how bad a hand we had been dealt five decades ago. You might even then be able to connect the dots and understand that he and his team were proved wrong by a group of exceptional men and women who saw far and loved this land of ours like nobody did since.

Likewise Vidia – the V in V.S. Naipaul – made some really sharp observations about Mauritius. The kind of insights that would make the day of any policy wonk whether it was in 1973 or forty-five years later. Don't like it too much that he called us an Overcrowded Barracoon? Well, we had one of the highest population densities in the world back then – we still do sitting at no. 007 – and you've surely not forgotten what are the two things Malcolm said we grow here. As a matter of fact it would be far too generous a compliment if someone used these two words to describe us today. Given how much we've regressed.

And then there is Stiglitz who found that everything was going on swimmingly in our island. His 2011 visit occurred a few years after a toxic bean-counter had done extensive damage to our economy and to the lives of thousands with his flat tax and reverse Midas touch. The massive irony of course is that Joe was part of the successful economic team of Bill Clinton who had reversed the harmful tax cuts of a bunch of Voodoo economists led by one Ronald Reagan and the first Bush President – this had caused US debt to balloon from $1tn to $4tn in twelve short years.

The least he could have done was to share his experience and recommend that we make an economic about turn. After all the Sithanen toohrooh had grown to Rs116bn by the end of 2010. A huge amount roughly equal to our GDP for the last six months of 2006 but only one tenth of the level it reached last December. But he didn't preferring to put his foot in his mouth and spraying us with excessive doses of flattery. I don't think this made him gain any new fans among those who had raised at least one eyebrow when he got that prize – which is as old as our independence – from the Swedish central bank.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

MMM Siyn Enn Gran Lakor Elektoral

Pu eleksyon zeneral le 13 Septam 2024. Wi, MMM pu al ansam ek Party Malin dan enn lakor a la Palestinyenn dan lintere siperyer Moris. An efe, lider Party Malin finn anons sa a so promye konferans de pres trimestryel pu lane 2020 ansam ek lider MMM. Lider Party Malin pu PM pandan 4 an ek 51 semen ek lider MMM pu PM pandan leres letan. Lider MMM sir zot pu gayn tu bann siez – sirtu apre depar tu bann fos vre militan ek bann vre fos aktivis depi dan MMM – ek sa pu permet zot al de lavan ek zot proze fer Lil Morist vinn enn pei far.

Dimunn pa pe tro konpran kifir lider MMM pe kontan kumsa parski MMM inn gayn zis enn tiket ek enn pos kuma PPS dan enn evantyel guvernman PM-MMM. Bon se vre ki apre sa gro tranbleman de ter dan dernye eleksyon zeneral – elekter ti vot zis bann bon kandida ek ti donn bann seki gayn enn move bagratel enn kontra afermaz 99 banane dan karo kan – li paret ki MMM inn gayn enn ase bon deal. Par kont dimunn pe dimann zot si pe apel sa enn lakor Palestinyenn parski tu le de ti met enn keffiyeh.

Lider MMM finn avwe ki bann negosyasyon pa ti fasil. Inn pran lider Party Malin ek li trwa mwa pu resi tom dakor. Obstak prinsipal sete partaz post siprem. Lider MMM ti kumans propoz vinn PM pandan enn mwa me lider Party Malin ti pe dakor zis pu enn demi-zurne. Lider MMM finn salye zenerosite ek patriotism lider Party Malin.