A Former Lord Mayor Remembers Another

Why Bizlall Shouldn’t Skip the Next General Election

Because he has never been closer to getting back into parliament. As chart 1 shows, his vote share in December 2014 was almost three times better than his previous attempt twenty-three years earlier. The double-digit performance was the result of the increased sophistication of voters, Jack’s track record as a union boss, his position on a range of national issues over the past four decades and voters’ desire to thwart the wicked plan of a scheming trio. 

His 11.5% vote share in the 2017 by-election (see 2) was even more impressive because unlike in a general election voters had only one vote. The fourth-place finish put him within breathing distance of Ms. Juddoo, the candidate of the MMM, who had mobilised way more resources than he did in the riding that had elected her then-leader for the first time in 1976. She has since left the MMM and that party is skipping the by-election in no. 7 so as to avoid making more voters wonder whether all it can now aspire to is a decent autopsy. Which shouldn’t be too difficult for this right-wing party to obtain and that too at a fair price given the skill set available within its ranks. 

The shoestring budget on which Mr. Bizlall ran his campaign ensured that he probably spent the fewest number of rupees for each one of his votes. Swearing an affidavit in these times of maximum distrust in our political class – an ahead-of-its-time decision – has surely helped and will most likely become an essential condition before we even consider who we’ll be sending to parliament in the next few months. That’s especially true given that it appears that trickle-down economics has helped to end the long love affair between Pamplemousses/Triolet and Ramgoolam II.

Another Pope, Another Mauritius

When he visits us tomorrow, Francis will find a Mauritius that’s very different from the one that greeted the most travelled Pope ever, John Paul II, thirty years ago. As the chart shows we’ve regressed in all but two ways. The cake produced over the four years before Monday’s trip (cake increase) is almost two-and-a-half times smaller, savings have collapsed, rupee has lost more than half of its value, road fatalities over the last four years are about a quarter higher and unemployment two times bigger. Inequality has also increased substantially. More on this later. 

Many of the problems we’re facing can be traced back to the 15% flat tax which has placed public finances in a critical position. Indeed at the end of 2018 there was Rs1.5tn of GDP missing which should have generated Rs300bn of revenue for our government. This would have made the latter debt-free. No wonder then that there’s plenty of signs we’re in big trouble the latest being that more than 50% of the vehicles at our fire stations and pumps don’t work. This shouldn’t be a surprise for Francis who has stated publicly several times that trickle-down doesn’t work. Let’s see what he says while he’s here.