2010: The Year in Review

January: The civil society started the decade unsure about who they would be voting as PM later during the year but clear that Paglanomics had to be stopped. Ramgoolam's pathetic second mandate was analysed along the dimensions he said mattered most to us while Elvis is suspected to have commented on the budget. Tens of billions of rupees of FDI were unable to reduce unemployment to single-digits. The audit report will be late just when we needed it the most.

February: 65% of a poll says Sithanen will not stay on as Finance Minister. Union bosses ask PM not to renew Mansoor's contract. The latter cuts the FS to size while Sithanen's university buddy is said to second-guess Parliament. The real reason behind the HR guidelines is analysed. The share of coal in electricity production is now 49 times larger than when Navin first became PM. He also makes a U-turn to announce that the death penalty will be reintroduced.

March: Titmuss never won any Nobel. Lousy economic polices forces a twice shy Ramgoolam to consider the MSM as a potential ally. The job creation record of the two zinku compared. The PM dissolves Parliament and invites voters to a 35-day campaign.

Read the review for Q2, Q3, Q4.

Ramgoolam Implying He is A Weak PM

See, he said in an interview to Le Mauricien that he was against Infinity BPO receiving any stimulus money. The snag is that this company has been getting government help on more occasions than one. That too after it was granted stimulus paisa. So here is a PM not getting his way, repeatedly.

He went on to add in another interview to The Mauritius Times that he told Stiglitz he had always been against trickle-down economics. Hmm. How strong a PM then would have allowed such a vicious version of these toxic policies to be implemented between 2005 and 2010? Especially when we know that they amount to a brutal betrayal of Labour Party's DNA.

And he plans of reintroducing the death penalty. That's not going to happen either. Unless he wants to end his third term prematurely.

PM To Reintroduce Death Penalty on A Whim

Or after taking note of the results of the private poll he ordered recently. What a lot of people are having trouble understanding is how can somebody make such a U-turn on an important issue like this. And we're not talking of just anybody here. We're talking of the guy who holds the highest office of the land. And why now, a few months before we go to vote for the next government?

Was that done to send some hope to the MSM which is still waiting for an appointment to discuss the terms of an alliance? Or to remind the PMSD that the Labour Party is open to any and all political arrangements including those that leave XLD on the sideline?

Maybe, but it also confirms that Ramgoolam doesn't stand for anything. He just want to stay in power at all costs and is prepared to surrender whatever common sense he might have had to a poll.