FPTP is a Special Kind of PR System

One that comes with a majority prize. It's a great system as it generates stable government after stable government. This has enabled Mauritius to achieve what it has. Its disadvantage is that a few times the prize may get too big. As we've seen in 1982, 1991, 1995 and 2000. But on the first three of those occasions the alliances did not last very long: between nine and twenty-one months. Which means that our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system saved us from going to vote a number of times because it's not a system which is vote wise and outcome foolish. Plus there are smart ways of correcting the most extreme of its scenarios without resorting to totally undemocratic devices like party lists that would rob voters of an important weapon: the final word to dump a politician.

Adding PR seats to our FPTP setup is not an option as we've seen what happened in Rodrigues election after election. It will eat away the stability that the majority prize provides and which is necessary for governments to operate properly. Besides our parliament is already too big. 

A European joke captures well how lucky we are to have the FPTP system here:

What is European paradise?

British parliamentary system (FPTP)

German engineering

French cuisine

Italian romance

And European hell?
Italian parliamentary system (PR)
French engineering
British cuisine
German romance

Britain has had 20 governments in 100 years. Italy, 20 governments in 5 years.

In fact Italy has had 62 governments between 1946 and 2013. But you get the point.

Why Berenger's Electoral Reform Proposal is A Dangerous Flop

He wants to increase the number of MPs in our Parliament by more than 45%. That's totally ridiculous because anyone with an internet connection knows that our Parliament is already too big. By one yardstick we shouldn't have more than 12 MPs. We already have 5 times more than that. That's more than enough.

Berenger wants the bulk of that increase -- 20 out of 28 -- on a party list. That's dangerous and quite perverse. The Economist recently reminded us that party lists shift MP loyalty from voters to party leaders. Given the performance of our political actors over the past several years the last thing we want to do is to ask them to stop being accountable to us.

The MMM leader has been in the political landscape for 45 years. It's time for him to retire. And allow something that his party has been bereft of for a very long time to make a much needed comeback: fresh bold ideas.

Party Lists Have Undermined Accountability in SA

According to The Economist which ran an interesting article on South Africa last October. The famous magazine rightly concludes that individual MPs don't worry about voters anymore: they instead bend over backwards to please party leaders who determine how far they end up from the top of the list.

Guess it too is saying that party lists are evil.

Dutch Disease Turns 50

Here's what happened in 1959. When Holland exported the gas it had discovered in its waters, that increased the value of its currency and made other industries less competitive. In the process thousands of jobs were lost. The term was coined by The Economist in 1977 to remind us that what was supposed to be a blessing turned out to be a curse.

Now, getting record amounts of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) like we did starting 2006 should have had a similar effect. Our currency should have appreciated and made us all feel richer. And we could have allowed it to appreciate painlessly so that the non-greedy section of our manufacturing sector had had time to adjust.

But as you will recall, that's not exactly what happened. We had Sithanen on TV informing us that a fatwa had to be issued on our rupee in the second half of 2006 on the basis that it had not depreciated for a few years! And that was done in a year of agriflation and after the finance minister had removed subsidies on rice and flour and introduced an inequality-creating flat-tax.

And just to dissipate any remaining doubts that we might have had that this was coming straight from Kafka, a 'Person of the year' award was even attributed to Dr. Sithanen in the same year.