Dose of PR Would Create Chronic Political Instability

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Here's One Important Reason You Don't Want PR

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Book That Makes Mauritian Voters Smart As Hell Published

It's available in several locations worldwide since yesterday. The Mauritian diaspora will be able to understand GE2024 and politics in their motherland and elsewhere like never before.

Voter Survey for GE2024 Goes Live

Takes only a couple of minutes. We'd love to get your responses in this anonymous poll. And we'll publish the aggregate results.

Eski Plant Plis Kan Se En Bon Stratezi Pu Moris?

ReA Se En Parti Extrem Drwat

Anu Tiek En Palab Ki Abitie Fer Lor FPTP

Where Main Parties Stood When We Voted in November 2019

The three main blocks were very similar at the time. Lalit was right on all but one major issues.

Bizin Deklar Nu System Elektoral Kom En Trezor Nasyonal

Mauritius Gets 2nd Three–Cornered Fight

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. 

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.

Top 10 Narrowest General Elections

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 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.

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. 

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. 

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.

How Mature Are Mauritian Voters?

Quite mature and increasingly so. We just need to look at the calm environment in which our elections take place. Plus voters have proceeded with five changes of government (see 1) with four of these happening in the past twenty-three years. These were made a lot easier by our FPTP system which produced clear winners immediately in ten out of eleven general elections – it took a tiny bit more time to form a government in 1976. And given how we massively rejected the wicked plan of a scheming trio in December 2014 it is natural that proposed changes to our electoral system be put to us in a referendum and not decided in parliament as it smacks of a conflict of interest. Especially when they will seriously blunt a weapon we've used to keep several politicians out of our National Assembly including the five who have been our PMs. And open the door for all kinds of additional abuse in these times of passport sale and ministerial eye-test.