Voters Evaluate Ministers Constantly

And the analysis is getting more sophisticated. Every day. Thanks to the amount of quality information out there and the multiple ways people are now connected. Plus internet time is at least seven times faster than normal time. All this explains why newspapers have been dying across the world. People don't want to pay for news that don't lift them up or don't make them smarter. Or which are entirely fake. Or driven by a hidden agenda. Especially if they are badly written. This is good news for democracies. And bad for politicians and rent-seekers.

We've seen how smart Mauritian voters are in 2014. They didn't fall into the wicked trap of proportional representation and party lists, 7-year Presidential terms and fake simulations. And in the process kept several toxic politicians out of Parliament -- God bless our FPTP system. They've bagged victories with the family of new banknotes and the CHCL. They are now fighting for their basic rights: their beaches and their water. So these are healthy fights against nonsense and arrogance.

But the fights don't have to drag on. The Prime Minister can immediately cut a couple of Ministers to size or proceed with a reshuffle. Because we've got better things to do. Because we've fallen behind. And because it's 2017.

The Only Signal Ramgoolam Sent

Sithanen failed so he dumped him. Because if things were so great, he would never have contracted an alliance with Pravind Jugnauth or renewed the contract of SAJ as President.

The only thing everybody is angry about is why the PM didn't do that way earlier.

Why Ramgoolam is Dumping Sithanen

Because it's a very logical thing to do. The guy is the most incompetent Finance Minister our country has known. He has delivered the worst economic growth in decades and tons of robust poverty, flattened our tax structure to create inequality by the truckload while unemployment has stayed in double-digits despite Mauritius receiving some Rs40 billion of FDI.

Worse, he has created serious structural problems for our economy by gifting billions to a dead industry. And we shouldn't forget the controversial stimulus package as well as the mega-skeletons.

And should we start talking about what has been going on at the Bank of Mauritius or the string of totally irresponsible statements he has uttered over the last five years?

Where Ramgoolam has failed is that he allowed the bean-counter to mess up Mauritius for so many years.

How Ramgoolam Did On Issues That Matter To Us

At least as revealed by a recent poll he ordered.

Purchasing power. He failed because cumulative inflation reached about 33% at the end of 2009 and the corresponding amount for the poor hit 47%. And all of this happened while massive FDI poured into Mauritius. His government had already produced the same amount of high inflation as the previous one by May 2008 -- so here's one extra thing he shouldn't blame the global crisis for.

Education. His government didn't think hard enough about this crucially important issue although there were some little things done here and there.

Employment. Navin's current government has apparently created 40,000 jobs but the savings rate hitting a historical low tells us that many of these didn't pull people out of the poverty the high inflation put them in.

Environment. He made some fine speeches but nothing happened. He made a few more and still nothing happened. Except maybe that we now use a lot more coal to produce our electricity

Traffic. I didn't see anything. Did you?

Fraud and corruption. Don't know about these but for sure corporate governance has reached a low in Mauritius. For example did you ever find out how the STC lost Rs3 billion on hedging when it didn't have any of that to do?

Evaluating Ramgoolam's Second Mandate

Economic: Worst average growth in 25 years at 4.32%. Savings at 30-year low. Economy has become more vulnerable by becoming less competitive. He didn't solve any major problems. Traffic, for example, has been clamping us down for another 5 years. So he wasn't able to solve it in 10 years as Prime Minister. And he says he likes speed.

Social Justice: Never in the history of our independent country has growth been so unequally distributed.  Reducing marginal tax rates -- as in the Reagan years -- allows the rich to hit the jackpot. Flattening the tax structure is the thing to do to create maximum social injustice. Don't forget to add a lot of speculative FDI to that and subtract a weaker safety net for the poor and the middle-class to get an idea of what has happened. Also cumulative inflation, the worst enemy of the poor, has been between 54% and 70% higher than under Federation 2 since 2005. Ramgoolam has turned back the clock of social progress in this country. That's a betrayal of the dearest ideals of the Labour Party and of what SSR stood for.

Cultural Growth: After failing on the economy and on social justice he's been recently including cultural growth in his speeches. Does boring us to death with the same stories about SSR count as cultural growth? I don't think so. And is cultural growth possible when you're creating poverty and inequality by the truckload?

Environment: Maurice Ile Durable should be re-christened as Maurice Ile Palabres. Nothing significant was achieved on this front over the last 4.5 years.