2019: The Year in Review

Q1: Our parliament is too big. 5 reasons the LP/MMM alliance lost in 2014. Rekin dir non a simagri elektoral. Corporations should not fund political parties. TJC was set up against regressive backdrop. How Sweden became a safety champ. What makes Singapore wealthier than Japan. ICJ thinks UK should end occupation of Chagos. Piti depas papa.

Q2: Sithanen flat tax fuels more street protests. Voting on the roof of Europe begins. PJ against more women in parliament. Amritsar massacre turns 100. Fond du Sac learns compulsory acquisitions come in different flavours. For a vibrant democracy have these 5 ingredients. Perspective on flat tax damage. Tax policies should go in affidavits. Sithanen toohrooh could rise by Rs338bn by year-end. Norway bigger football powerhouse than Brazil.

Q3: Long wait over as Mauritius wins first IOIG. Pope to spend day with victim of trickle-down economics. Trees in Beau-Vallon have something in common with our saving culture. Toxic bean-counter self-praises himself. Why Bizlall should run in the general election? One Lord Mayor remembers another.

Q4: Did you enjoy Ramgoolam’s fourth term? Why dumping Gini coefficient is a good idea. Decomposing the 2014 defeat. Why Navin didn’t lose in 2010. Ramgoolam ena en nuvo palab. SSR has the best road-safety record. Intense cyclones didn’t destroy our resilience. Unproductive FDI doesn’t make up for collapse in savings. 10 narrowest general elections. Sugar has no future. Subron tries to fool us again. Who to vote for? Bérenger believes he’s the real miracle-man? God bless our FPTP system. Mauritius slides dangerously towards autocracy. Why SSR left a strong legacy. Fact-checking is oxygen of democracy. Let’s roll back drug use. 

How a PM Can Leave a Strong Legacy

Why the Dutch Are Smart

Recent Evolution of Mauritius Has Been Unhealthy

One Reason the FPTP System is So Good

Can’t Find Referendum in Electoral Manifestos

Searched for the word in the manifestos of the three main political blocks but didn’t find it. It’s not in the 15 key measures of the MSM/ML alliance although it was there in the social contract of the Lepep Alliance in 2014 when there were only 12 key measures. That’s a pretty bad sign when you add surveillance state and the flat tax.

What was not difficult to find was the French word for sugar. It popped up fast at least a few times in each one of them. So these three parties will keep us mired in a low-growth trap for the next few years if we vote for them. We don’t have to. 

Bérenger Says He’s the Real Miracle Man

And not Lutchmeenaraidoo because he did all the work after the 60-0 in 1982. This is another funny statement from him because he was Minister of Finance for only nine months and if you read Cuttaree’s Behind The Purple Curtain you can’t fail to notice that about the only thing they were busy doing until March 1983 was fighting each other inside the alliance. This of course leaves even less time to do good work. Furthermore if a neophyte in 1982 can create an ‘economic miracle’ with one budget surely he will be able to do at least as well if he ever returned as Finance Minister later.

The trouble for Bérenger is that he did return as Finance Minister in 2000 and got the chance to present not one but three budgets. And what did Cuttaree have to say about the state of the economy after those budgets? Something very interesting: “Nous sommes en urgence économique. La situation est sans précédent.” It was a period in which almost twenty-three thousands jobs were lost in one industry alone in a few years. Mr. Bérenger of course described the situation differently dubbing Mauritius the best managed country in the world. What else to expect from a party with more than a little penchant for self-aggrandisement?

Knowledge about the economy is not something that the MMM seemed to have got better at since. Reza Uteem, their shadow Finance Minister, was heard a couple of years ago on a radio saying that the offshore sector needs a stimulus package. The MMM has also set saving the dead sugar industry as a top priority in its electoral manifesto. It doesn’t do well on other important national issues either. 

Did Trickle-down Economics Work in Mauritius?

Issues That Will Decide the General Election

The Rise and Rise of Parti Malin

It’s a real pity that the by-election in no. 7 was not held earlier because we might have seen something historic. Indeed Danrajsingh Aubeeluck (DA), the unmistakable leader of Parti Malin, could have received a number of votes close to the one the MMM candidate got. See the MMM has been on a steady decline for a long time and managed only 14% in the last by-election which took place in an urban riding. Depending on which candidate it picked the latter might have collected only 3-4% in no. 7 with DA getting around 1-2% – not unreasonable given his improving performance shown in chart 1 – if not more given how the voting pattern has been changing. Citizens after all have become increasingly smart. 

 

Mr. Malin has also been doing a lot better in general elections quadrupling his vote share in a decade in no. 17 (see 2) and clocking his best rank ever in the riding of Ramgoolam in 2014. He's now running in the same constituency as the outgoing PM with the aim of keeping PJ out of parliament. That's not as far-fetched as you might think given that the 793 votes he collected represent about 23% of missing votes that would have sent Ramgoolam back to parliament.

Why Subron’s Mixing of Issues is Dangerous

I totally agree that we shouldn’t have to declare one of four communities to stand as a candidate. But where I definitely disagree with him is that we should include a dose of PR, go for double-candidacies and that 20 extra MPs is no big deal.

Adding a dose of PR will lead to chronic political instability, double candidacies will make it more difficult to keep really bad MPs out of parliament while our National Assembly is already too big and should be downsized, not enlarged.

No need to drag Krouink into the debate. This faux-patriotism shouldn’t fool anybody. 

Fact-Checking A Few Sithanen Statements

He said recently that his flat tax had increased government revenue by 20% in the first year of its implementation, that it had attracted a lot of investments from abroad, produced growth rates of more than 5% and had created 10,000 jobs per year. 

1. Government revenue may increase if growth is better or if you increase the tax rate or tax more things. Growth had increased in 2006 because the economy rebounded after the big textile contraction. He should tell us by how much revenue increased in every year since his flat tax was implemented. Besides the main reason to slash top tax rates to 15% was to get 8% growth rates. As chart shows we never got those growth rates even in the decade following the end of the Great Recession – just check how many consecutive years we didn’t even get half of that. And this will cause a government revenue shortfall approaching Rs360bn at the end of the year. 

2. We surely got a lot of FDI (Rs189bn between 2006 and 2018) but this pales in comparison to the Rs570bn savings missing after he killed the savings culture. And the FDI has mostly been speculative ensuring that thousands will not be able to become home-owners. 

3. Finally what kind of jobs are we talking here? Definitely not good jobs. Otherwise growth rates would have been higher, savings would have rebounded and there would never had been the need for the controversial stimulus package.

Mauritius and Global Warming

One Way Lalit is Different From Mainstream Parties

It doesn’t want to bail out the sugar industry while the LP, MMM and the MSM do. Rezistans ek Alternativ too wants save to this old industry. So who’s right?

Top 10 Narrowest General Elections

Missing Savings Casts New Light on Flat Tax Damage

Was Lepep’s Growth Performance Better?

Intense Cyclones Didn’t Destroy Our Resilience

Meet Something A Lot Better Than the Gini Coefficient

It’s called share of income growth. It looks at how the increase in GDP over a given period has been distributed among the different income groups. The clip below shows what happened after a most regressive policy was adopted. 

Savings-Killer Misses Elephant in the Room

In April 2017 Sithanen said that the tram express would be a financial disaster because it would fail to cover costs and saddle future generations with debt. This was kind of funny for the bean-counter to say because as the chart shows government has had a revenue shortfall in all the years since 2006 which is the year he implemented his economic snake oil aka flat tax – there’s a flat-tax-related deficit as soon as growth is lower than the promised 8%.

In fact as from 2013 the revenue deficit caused by his regressive tax policies had grown big enough to fully pay for at least one 19-billion-rupee tram every single year – two as from 2016 and three as from last year. So in total there’s enough government money missing over the past fourteen years to pay for at least 10 trams (15 when you add the figures for the first seven years and the sums left over in the other seven).

In the meantime central government budgetary debt has risen by Rs172bn over the same period without any major national problems getting solved. I wonder if future generations will enjoy the terrible mess we’re in as much as we are.

It’s great we’re voting soon. 

Who’s Got the Best Road Safety Record?

At an average of 151 road fatalities per year in office – fraction of year in office greater than half is attributed the full year – Navin Ramgoolam has the worst record (see 1). Barely better is Pravind Jugnauth. Bérenger is roughly between SAJ and PJ. The best is SSR. He would have had about 178 fewer deaths than SAJ had his prime ministership been five years longer. The two Ramgoolams have stints in office of the same length but NR’s tally is 424 higher. This is rather bad given all the progress that has been made in the field of road safety for the past three decades. And we have to remember that personal computers were not as ubiquitous before 1982 as they’ve been for the past twenty years.

Chart 2 confirms how much we’ve fallen behind Singapore. While she has seen the total number of road deaths fall decade after decade Mauritius has seen her numbers increase by 40% in the second decade and literally stay flat for the next two. This has caused the gap between our totals to narrow substantially and it might even disappear by the end of next year. Which would be another source of embarrassment for us given that our population is about four and half times lower. But the next decade can be a lot better if we do two things. One is to ask candidates currently seeking our votes how they intend to bring these numbers down fast. The other is to assess the credibility of these plans. 

Riptir, Nuvo Palab Ramgoolam

Ramgoolam pan konvink buku dimun dernye sinq banane ki lin sanze apres sa siro zanana li ti gayne an 2014-la. Li pan tarde pu pas den staz kot li ti pe dir ki lin fer lerer a en lot kot li dir ki elekter pena lespri. An dot mo ki nu ban gopia. Kav li panse ki nu amnezik si parski lin reamen Sithanen, bug kin kas lekonomi, tuy sevings, ek fer en ta lezot kuyonad kuma stimilis pakeg ek depresye rupi. Li anvi tuy nu sistem electoral usi. Devet samem riptir Ramgoolam: kontinye kraz partu kuma ant 2005 ek 2014.

Sithanen trakase ek buku kitsoz i konpri inegalite. Be anu tiek en kut kin arive par gato nasyonal ban diferan klas menaz sak fwa ki li fin minis. 

How Navin Narrowly Avoided Defeat in 2010

After bagging a historic victory in July 2005 – the first time one of the three big parties beat the other two – on the promise of democratising the economy and Putting People First, Ramgoolam’s second mandate rapidly turns into a nightmare. Rupee slides, rich made to pay the same low tax rate of the poor, our basic welfare state is tampered with, the savings culture is destroyed, doors are wide open to allow foreign investments to quash the dreams of thousands of Mauritians to become homeowners and unfair labour laws are passed. The situation is so bad that the then PM has to give another Presidential mandate to SAJ as well as help get the current PM elected before negotiating an alliance with the MSM. 

But the damage done by Sithanen and Mansoor is so large that Ramgoolam has no choice but to also dump the toxic bean-counter. Luckily for him the opposition makes a series of mistakes and this enables him to stay in power by winning 49.7% of the votes against 42% or as the chart shows by a margin of about 150,000 votes. Had Ramgoolam given Sithanen a ticket in 2010 he would probably have lost as the bean-counter would have set back his side by 100,000 votes. It’s no coincidence either that Berenger didn’t invite Sithanen to join his alliance. 

Breaking Down the 2014 Electoral Defeat

We use the 543,667 votes shortfall that would have generated a 60-0 victory for the LP/MMM alliance and combine it with the five reasons we identified for the loss. If we assume that they were equally important that is bringing Sithanen back had the same effect as a dose of proportional representation (PR) or the Rs540bn GDP shortfall – aka Sithanen Toohrooh (ST) – caused by the ruinous Sithanen flat tax that had accumulated by the end of 2014 then each one of these factors set the losing alliance back by 108,733 votes. To get a sense of these numbers we need to remember that Pravind Jugnauth lost by 38 votes in 2005 while Navin Ramgoolam tasted defeat because of 3,496 votes in 2014.

Why Savings Collapsed Despite Surviving Three Intense Cyclones

Essentially because a bean-counter started taxing bank interest as he needed to find other sources of government revenue after he reduced top tax rates before flattening the tax structure to 15%. The flat tax was supposed to generate growth rates of 8% every year since 2006 but as we’ve clipped rates far lower than this – 2019 will be the ninth year they are under 4% – savings, as expected, have never recovered. 

As the chart shows this is very different from the rebound we experienced after Danielle, Gervaise and Claudette visited us. Removing the battery of exemptions that a whole nation had used to patiently craft their long-term financial plans over several decades and the record inequality the unsustainable and crazy tax policies created didn’t help either. But there was more than injury. 

Flat Tax Hands 750,000 Mauritians Their Worst Share of National Cake

This is something the Gini coefficient won’t be able tell you but the above chart will. So yes, the bottom 60% of Mauritian households have been made more vulnerable by the Sithanen flat tax in the first decade following its implementation creating record inequality at the same time. They had their best shares of the last twenty-five years a quarter of a century ago. Plus we need to remember that since 2006 we’ve been producing some of our smallest national cakes ever thanks in large part to the damage done by the same unsustainable tax structure. Which means 750,000 of us got our smallest share of the tiniest of cakes. Not exactly what you’d call resilience. More on this later.

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. 

For Good Cup of Tea After Good Cup of Tea

Stopped using Bois-Cheri vanilla tea bags soon after I had one cup of Freshpak’s rooibos tea. That was years ago. It has a strength and consistency in taste I didn’t find in the local brand. I use my phone’s timer to steep it in fresh boiling water for exactly two minutes and then add some milk but no sugar. Great habit to skip sugar in tea as we drink several hundreds cups in a year. Have made quite a few friends try it. Most if not everyone of them have switched. 

Pope Should Squeeze Botanical Garden in Tight Schedule

Because there might be a six-lane motorway and a couple of shopping malls right in the middle of it the next time he or his successor visits our island. Granted promoters would have promised to plant 300,000 trees or whatever in Mare Chicose but it will never be the same thing. Just like trips to Beau-Vallon have been ruined forever. 

Bipolarizasyon Politik Se En Mit

Dan Lamerik ena li. Parti Demokrat ek Parti Repiblikin. Sa de la tu letan mate ek prezidan sorti depi en sa de parti la. Moris nu pa fin ena sa. Se ki nwena se rekonfigirasyon 4-5 parti dan de lalyans ki sanze a traver letan. Mem an 1967 pa ti vreman ena li parski dan Parti Lindepandans tiena Ptr, IFB ek CAM.

Par kont se kin arive depi 2005 se ki nun retruv nu ek ban Parlman byin regresif ki ti pur reprezantasyon proporsyonel (PR) ek ban politik iltra-liberal. Ptr su Navin Ramgoolam fin trayir ban valer sa parti ki ti lager pu lindepandans ek don nu leta providans. Setadir li pur PR, flat tax kin kas lekonomi ek li pa fin kon byin antur li. MMM usi mekonesab ek nepli ena nanye interesan pu ofer Moris. Ek depi 2015 nun truve ki MSM usi fin vin en parti neoliberal ek fin pratik ban politik bankal kin kontinye kul Moris ek pena respe pu lanatir. Tu sa la fin an parti arive parski ban parti la ena manb infliyan ki ena lintere dan offshore ek zot gayn finansman korporatif inportan.

Bon nuvel se ki lelektora fin kontinye vin pli malin. 

Nation Split Over Which is Worse

Is it his stupid flat tax which has broken the economy and created a Rs1,500bn GDP gap at the end of last year because we never got the 8% growth he promised for the past fourteen years or his ethnic electoral model which he used to forecast an 80% vote share for the LP/MMM alliance in the 2014 general election? While the problems created by his crappy economic model have partly been discussed not enough has been said of that ‘40%+40%=80%’ prediction of his faulty model which he no doubt used to change constituency — anybody thinking of changing ridings these days should avoid it as plague — and in the process elevated the status of reading tea leaves to that of an entirely respectable trade. 

The chart is a modest contribution to fill this gap. As you can see the bean-counter has made an error of 846,273 votes. That’s more than the 785,645 votes that alliance actually got. Which means that 40%+40% turned out to be equal to 38.5% — the thought of him being Minister of Finance again must have sent shivers down the spine of many voters. So the red/purple team got less than half what he predicted. It looks a lot like the GDP growth rate we’ve been clipping for the past seven years. They have all been less than half the 8% target. Is there a pattern here? Maybe. Maybe not when we look at the collapse of our savings rate. In any case 846,273 is a huge number of votes. It’s at least 400,000 larger than the votes that made us an independent country. In fact it’s even greater than the votes of the Independence Party and the PMSD in the August 1967 election put together. He’s now saying he got misreported and never said that. Even if we grant him this just for now I recall hearing him say that he’s predicting a 60-0. This implies a vote share of a little more than 65% (the vote share of the LP/MMM in 1995) and a still gigantic error of 543,667 votes. 

If you ask me I don’t think it’s important we decide which is worse. These are both catastrophes that need to be analysed carefully and prompt voters to require political alliances to have their tax policies among other things detailed in affidavits. They should also help us stay alert and not get distracted by the ethnic hogwash that’s going to be thrown our way in the next few months. Let’s stay focussed on the real issues. There’s no shortage of them. 

How Our Offshore Treaty Risk Became a Much Bigger Problem

With 640m multidimensionally poor people in India in 2005-6 and the internet making millions a lot smarter it was natural that the pressure to renegotiate the DTAA with Mauritius would increase significantly. So it was sheer stupidity for one bean-counter to flatten our tax structure to a rate (15%) that has caused serious damage to our economy in order to build a facade of low-tax jurisdiction. Besides we never voted for this crap aka Paglanomics or if you prefer Shaitanomics in 2005. Killing our savings culture was not exactly another smart move. Neither was gifting a sunset industry €138m — its weight in the economy was more than six times smaller at the end of 2018 (0.5%) than it was in 2005. Add the severance of the link between what we pay for oil and what it costs on the world market and stupid hire-fire laws to understand why we’re heading into a wall. 

And a few days ago he uttered more rubbish including that without our Global Business (GB) sector — this is where he’s been working for many years — our currency would maybe have been trading at Rs50 to the USD. Scare tactics by Dr. TINAnen. But as the chart shows it took only five years from the inception of that sector for our rupee to lose a quarter of its value and a further five to shed almost another 25% of the average value it had in 1992 — an index of the dollar value of our rupee is used so that when the curve is going down it means our rupee is losing value with respect to the USD, makes it easier to visually estimate its percentage changes and we’ve added two horizontal lines to show two values of our rupee relevant for our discussion here in the format you’re used to seeing it. 

This chart will also help put the myth that Ringadoo was a bad Minister of Finance because he devalued the rupee by 30% and 20% in a better perspective. See our rupee lost 55% of its dollar value between 1992 and 2015 in an economic environment that was incomparably better. In fact we would probably have hit another dismal low had there not been a BoM Governor who knew what he was doing between 2007 and 2014 to resist energetically an incompetent Minister of Finance who when asked why the rupee had been depreciating rapidly replied that it had not depreciated for a long time. For sure current trade imbalances reflect to a great extent the generalised policy-making failure of the past dozen years. Our rupee will enjoy better days as soon as we get our act together. Just like India who had by 2015-6 reduced the number of poor people by 271m.

Long Wait Over As Mauritius Wins First IOIG

At one point it was a close race. And then gold medals for Mauritius kept coming in. They just wouldn’t stop. The focus suddenly changed from the familiar ‘how close to the top we would finish’ to ‘will anyone be able to catch up?’ These are new beginnings that shouldn’t be wasted. They should be used to at least roll back substance abuse and demand better performance from our politicians — recall elections would be a decent starting point. Government should use the very intense feelings in the air right now to bring back some basic common sense like announcing that no public beach will be privatised from this point on and that it is immediately putting an end to the indecent land speculation. We might not be hosting the IOIG again before another twenty years but two objectives should keep us busy for the next few games. Win the games outside of Mauritius. And win them in Reunion. 

Will the 10th IOIG Welcome a New Winner?

So far only Madagascar has prevented Reunion from winning all the previous nine games. And both times happened when the Big Island hosted them. Seychelles almost won the 8th edition on its own turf but in the end fell short by just two gold medals. The closest Mauritius got was a shortfall of 11 gold medals the last time it organised the games. But we didn’t have Krouink sixteen years ago.

How Does Norway As a Football Powerhouse Sound?

Thanks to being one of the four countries to have won the women FIFA World Cup the oil-rich country is just behind Uruguay on a World Cup per capita basis because of its small population. Germany is third and the only nation to have lifted the trophy in both the men and women versions of the tournament. Argentina and France with their two trophies are next in the ranking after Italy but ahead of Brazil because five trophies are not enough to compensate for the 209 million souls of the South American country with a land mass larger than continental USA. Japan is last among the eleven countries but this could change with its shrinking population especially if its women team in four years is as good as this year’s and doesn’t exit the tournament because of a very controversial penalty. Uruguay can sleep tight for roughly another eight years – or until the first general election on planet earth with one billion eligible voters – and that too if Norway wins the next three tournaments as Germany is not a threat for the next 90 years. 

The Wrong Budget Tomorrow and the Sithanen Toohrooh Rises By Rs338bn

To Rs1,781bn by year-end when we could be voting. This would increase the government revenue missing with respect to the reason for flattening the tax structure to 15% – getting 8% growth – by a huge Rs68bn. This is likely to be more than 50% of the budgeted revenue announced tomorrow. Or if you prefer the equivalent of 97 eye-hospitals without playing with our sovereignty or a quarter of the central government budgetary debt at the end of last year. Or more than three Lepep trams. Voters understand that indiscriminate tax breaks is an illusion and will only bring us way too close to a massive social crisis. 

Putting the Flat Tax Mess in Perspective

Let us assume that we halve the average 8% growth rate target in 2008 and we reduce it by three quarters in 2009 to account for the Great Financial Recession. That’s a pretty conservative assumption because an average growth rate takes into consideration years that are below average. Let us also assume that the government revenue shortfall generated by the Sithanen flat tax for each year — you’ll have one for any given year if the actual growth rate is less than 8% — is reinvested at a rate equal to the rate of inflation until the end of 2015. Again this is a fairly conservative assumption. 

Then at the end of 2015 the reinvested cumulative government revenue shortfall (RCRS) would have ballooned to Rs114bn. That’s 95% the size of the National Pension Fund at the time. Basically another NPF which would have allowed higher benefits to be paid or from an earlier age or some combination of the two. That would have been concrete proof of an ‘early harvest’ or a ‘bumper crop’. But that’s not the situation we’ve been in. Instead government has been trying for many years to target pension benefits. Rs114bn is also about 70% of the cost of a mass rapid transit (MRT) aka heavy metro system. We don’t need this system for now just like the Lepep tram but we would have been able to afford one. Rs114bn is almost half of our public debt at the end of 2015. This would have given us a better credit rating or at least a more favourable credit outlook. Rs114bn is also exactly six times the cost of changing all the leaking pipes of the CWA. 

But this was in 2015 and given that the Lepep government has maintained the regressive policies and added a few of its own the shortfall has kept on increasing and compounding. Three years later it had exceeded Rs300bn. 

Five Key Ingredients For a Vibrant Democracy

1. First-past-the-post (FPTP) system to have strong and stable governments that form fast after general elections and don’t collapse after partner(s) leave winning alliance. Temporary lopsided results we got a few times can be mitigated with prudent tweak without making bloated Parliament bigger or suppressing dissent with stupid anti-defection legislation. 

2. Progressive taxation (PT) and top tax rates at the right level (35%) instead of a ruinous flat tax (FT) of 15% for better economic growth and distribution after savings culture resuscitated, good drains, 24/7 water, halving of road fatalities fast, preservation of our world-famous views and harmony and respect of nature.

3. Recall elections (RE) to get rid of incompetent politicians within months and not five years. Cheap. Only Rs30m. The cost of a by-election. Expect better behaviour after we use it a couple of times. Think of it as excellent meksin laryaz. 

4. Statute referendums (SR) to reverse toxic policies or anti-patriotic ones and to get rid of Presidents. Relatively cheap. Rs300m. Would have prevented Rs300bn government revenue shortfall and GDP gap of Rs1.5tn at the end of 2018. And tense celebrations of Mauritius@50.  

5. Initiated constitutional amendment (ICA) to get rid of the BLS, allow kreol in our Parliament, prevent holders of constitutional posts from leaving with hefty benefits in all cases and impose term limits on PM and other important posts.

Second ingredient will allow us to resume a much better development path like between 1968 and 2005. Ingredients three and four will improve the situation further and will be infinitely better than what we’ve experienced after ultra liberal policies were implemented thirteen years ago. Their combined use may make ICA redundant as common sense would have made an interesting return. 

Berenger (PB), Ramgoolam (NR), Jugnauth (PJ), Sithanen (RS), Subron (AS) and Boolell want proportional representation (PR) to push us into an autocracy. That’s a situation where they implement toxic policies and it’s a lot harder to keep them out of parliament. But it’s wonderful for political dynasties. We don’t want this. 

Fond du Sac Told Compulsory Acquisitions Come in More Than One Flavour

One is fast. It was used for the Lepep tram, an entirely unnecessary project that will cost billions, solve nothing and is defacing important parts of several towns — the LP's version would have been as useless. The one citizens of this village got tastes different. It takes forever which explains why their lives were turned upside down three years in a row after rain fell.

But there is more at play here than a two-flavour system. Indeed government doesn't have enough money to undertake the most basic works that ensures that lives are not put at risk. Repeatedly. Even though public debt is ballooning. Blame it on the 15% flat tax which has reversed the clock of progress for an overwhelming majority of us. It will cause the Sithanen toohrooh to increase by over Rs358 billion (to at least Rs1.86 trillion or 3.5 times its 2014 level that was enough to cause a big political earthquake) by the end of 2019, likely an election year.

This GDP gap will be responsible for a government revenue shortfall of Rs71.2 billion this year alone. That's enough to change all leaking pipes, build enough drains to accommodate normal and not-so-normal downpours and help create the environment to allow the most educated generation of Mauritans to push their country forward. And in the interest of PJ's political survival to add a few tax brackets in the forthcoming budget.

A Hundred Years Later, Amritsar Still Awaits Apology

Elizabeth II has been there. David Cameron too. But so far no apology. A kniefall à la Willy Brandt for the massacre that helped liberate India would be a good start. And give the British an opportunity to come to terms with the atrocious role they've played in the loss of millions of lives in one or more Indian famines. 

A Polling Station Atop Mont Blanc, Almost

At 15,256 feet the one in Tashigang, Himachal Pradesh is now the world's highest and only 521 feet shy of the Franco-Italian roof but 856 feet higher than nearby Hikkim, the previous record-holder. One of over a million polling stations it has been set up for any of the 48 people that are allowed to vote there on May 19, the last of seven days of voting in the 2019 Indian general election. But it will not be as exclusive as the one erected in a remote Gujarati forest solely for Mahant Darshandas.

There will be an extra 85 million eligible voters -- roughly the population of Germany -- bringing the total to 900 million who will be tasked to elect 543 MPs in as many single-member constituencies (SMCs). 543 is unchanged from 5 years earlier -- our local political bonobos should take good note. India will have to wait for the 2029 election to cross the billion-voter mark. By that time she would have just overtaken China as the most populous country on spaceship Earth.

Voting starts today. Results will be proclaimed on May 23.

Sithanen Flat Tax Fuels More Street Protests

This time it was in Curepipe. Citizens were outraged that they've been without running water for up to two weeks. But what else could we expect when regressive tax policies have crippled government so much that it can't even pay for its own eye-hospital? And things will get worse as long as we remain on the wrong side of compounding. Boolell was there trying to score some cheap points -- the government revenue shortfall between 2005 and 2014 was big enough to change the 1,600km of leaking pipes at least five times over.

24/7 water is unlikely to happen when Collendavelloo completes his first term as Minister in the next few months. This is kind of obvious. See, when he took over about 45% of households enjoyed an all-day supply and this week he said it had reached 70%. So if it took 4 years to increase the percentage of subscribers getting round-the-clock water by 25 percentage points (by probably changing around 730km of leaking pipes) it will surely take more than a year to add the last 30% subscribers. Even if the Bagatelle dam comes into operation soon. In fact on the current trajectory 24/7 is not happening before the 2024 election year. Which is a good reason to put as much pressure as possible on government so it brings back some sanity to our tax structure. Because we surely don’t want 400,000 people to have water problems for another 4-5 years.

Public debate on this matter can also be enhanced if the Minister puts at least three very basic series of data on the CWA's website (the last annual report available there is for 2015). These are the length of the water network at the end of each year and the length and cost of pipes laid each year since the end of 1967. 

Piti Depas Papa

A la fin 2018 par Pravind Jugnauth (PJ) dan toohrooh Sithanen* ti 551 milyar rupi. Sa ve dir plis ki 125 milyar rupi par SAJ. Anfet par PJ ti osi depas rekordman ziska ler, Navin Ramgoolam (NR). PJ fin pran kat fwa edmi mwins letan ki NR parski zintere manz kapital apre en sertin letan si u pa fer seki bizin. PJ fin kontinye ek ban politik tre regresif ek insanse kin kontinye min enn lekonomi ki Sithanen fin tuye. Plis lor la biento.

*Toohrooh Sithanen se mank a gayne dan prodiksyon nasyonal konpare a en krwasans 8% ki Sithanen ti dir nu pu gayne ler li ti met flat tax 15%. Pu kon mank a gayne dan lakes guvernman u nek ena miltipliye toohrooh par pwa guvernman dan lekonomi. Dan mo ban kalkil mo abitye pran 20% bien ki pwa la zordi li 25%.

60 Years Ago, Voters Seize Wonderful Chance of Sending Maverick To Parliament

At that time it was called the Legislative Assembly and he's about twenty-seven-and-a-half years old on that 10th Monday of 1959 in colonial Mauritius. He already has a lot under his belt. He had co-founded the Mauritius Times roughly five years before and had spent 17 months outside of Mauritius literally globetrotting during which time he secured a 30-minute meeting with Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the philosopher and Vice-President of India. That's barely a decade after the British had been sent packing. Just imagine the energy in the atmosphere. But more happens in that long trip. A lot more. He travels to London and on his way back stops at Paris where he's lucky to have lunch with l'Abée Pierre thanks to contacts established in India. These meetings and travels reinforce what his self-customized education - reading many right sutras very early in his life didn't hurt - has already taught him.

So voters elect him on his first attempt as a candidate in a general election. More was to come his way. Elected as Secretary General of the Labour Party a couple of years later, a post which he kept for about 21 years, he used this position to bring method to the madness in the party. This period would coincide with his work in three Ministries as one of the most important architects of our welfare state. 

Two other factors made the completion of such a massive amount of work possible. The first is that his biggest fan happened to be one SSR. The other is the mathematician he married. 

Win At Old Trafford Could See Reds Lift Trophy on May 4

As per a reasonable scenario where they would win 7 of the remaining games (excluding today's result), draw 3 and lose one. City would get the same number of points from its 11 last games but increase its goal difference by an extra 6 goals compared to Liverpool. Should the Reds get only 1 point from Man Utd today they would have to wait for the final match day and hope to at least draw against Wolves at Anfield.

This would essentially bring us back to a situation like the final game of 1988/89 where the Reds needed just one point against Arsenal to win the League but ended up losing the match (they won the title for the last time the following year). If they lose tonight City would win by a better goal difference on May 12. This assumes for example that the Citizens draw at Crystal Palace one of the four teams that have beaten them this season. Not a given.

Hope your heart is in shape. 

Why Singapore's GDP Per Capita is 2X Japan's

On a PPP basis that is. And more than three times that of Malaysia. So location doesn't explain everything. Making the purchase of cars difficult has helped quite a bit. It was not a bad idea to keep good ties with the British either – something which Mauritius also did – and having the government intervene heavily. 

What We Can Learn From a Road Safety Champ

Massive Irony Lost on Too Many

The Truth and Justice Commission was set up in March 2009 to look at the complex consequences of slavery and indentured labour. The thing is that this happened at a time when trickle-down economics – the closest you can actually get to slavery in a democracy without recall elections and statute referendums – was implemented in Mauritius for the first time. And this happened a bit after new labour laws which many have regarded as being regressive and have been fighting to get repealed since were passed.

Fixing the pain and injustice of the past requires the same two ingredients as good government: money and talent. Money has obviously been in short supply – there was at least Rs300 billion missing in the government till at the end of last year compared to what the flat tax was supposed to bring in – and so has talent. This has led to an expected deterioration of the living conditions of way too many people. Add the massive disappointment with parties that had members of Cabinet over the last 13 years and you have the recipe for another shock general election.

Why Politicians Shouldn't Get Corporate Cash

Kozelidir Person of the Year 2018

It wasn't difficult to name AOC for this. She's such a big bowl of fresh air. And boy does she know what she's talking about.

How does a Sanders-Ocasio-Cortez sound for 2020?

Chomksy On How To Stem Flow of Refugees

Finalman Rekin Pann Vot 'Under Protest'

Le promye desam li pa ti ankor deside si pa li ti pu konplis pu transform Moris an enn repiblik bananyer. Sirma linn mezir anpler reaksyon tre negatif sosyete sivil par rapor a sa simagri PR ki MSM/ML ti propose la. So gran dezakor se ki li truv sa kuma Sachs so Model A alor ki li prefer Model C. Bel dezakor! Wadire kiken pa le aval pwazon parskinn bliye met enn tigit lavani.

Pli sir li pe espere ki Privy Council pu dir lor ka Medoint avan antam/kontinye negosyasyon. 

5 Reasons Labour/MMM Alliance Lost in 2014

1. Attempt to shift to a semi-presidential system for funny reasons without asking for voter permission in a referendum

2. Adding proportional representation (PR) to our electoral system – that would have created a lot of political uncertainty, bloated an already too big parliament and snatch a powerful weapon voters have – without getting our green light in a referendum first

3. Bérenger as PM – the guy who has only been able to win internal party elections for the past 18 years with his on/off antics and was far from being an impressive PM during 21 months

4. Sithanen – the bean-counter who killed our savings culture and introduced the economy-killing flat tax – as FM 

5. Impact of trickle-down economics (at least Rs540bn of GDP and Rs108bn of government revenue missing at end of 2014) that is Ramgoolam putting the 1% first

And what do you think are going to be the important factors in the next general election?

How Big Should Our Parliament Be?

Certainly not larger than the 66-70 MPs it can have under the current system. Increasing it by 50% to over 100 or even by 11-15 as the PM would like to is out of the question. Justifying a bigger National Assembly (NA) because our population has doubled since 1968 is problematic for at least two reasons. One is that according to Google or an interpolation of decennial census figures the number of inhabitants in Mauritius has in fact increased by only 58%. Two is that the size of our NA rose by 75% between 1963 and 1967 while the number of citizens increased by a mere 9%. Interestingly using the 1963 as base year yields a parliament of 70 which is how big it is today. 

It's way better that we compare our population/MP ratio to those of other countries. On this yardstick we do very poorly – more than 140 parliaments out of 195 do better than us. This is precious information as we can use it to find an optimal size for our NA. That's done in the chart and we've highlighted Denmark because 40 is kind of a natural number for us as this is how many MPs we sent in 1959 and 1963 when we had single-member constituencies.

The number of electors is not a useful measure either as this can increase with policy decisions – like it did in 1975 when the legal age was reduced by three years. Plus we shouldn't forget that the number of Indian electors increased by half a billion from 1977 to 2014 without any increase in the number of MPs. Besides we definitely don't want more MPs when we look at their average output especially when we know that each one costs us at least Rs2.6 million per year. What we need instead are recall elections.