Birthdays Are Not What They Used To Be

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.

Mauritius Gets 2nd Three–Cornered Fight

Issues That Will Decide the General Election

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?

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. 

Lalit Explains Non-Productive Invesments

Once you build a villa on agricultural land it will not generate employment like an agricultural village will. And we're not even talking how it will put real estate out of reach to large swathes of our population. They also mentioned that the major political parties are all the same. I'd go further: the LP and MSM have let Mauritius down by pursuing regressive policies as from 2006 after the MMM did so a long time ago.

They also called for the President to step down. They are not the only ones.

SAJ Government May Not Collapse If ML Leaves

Here's a recap of the arithmetic. Lepep wins the General Elections 47-13. They get 4 of the seven additional seats attributed. That brings their total to 51. Add the two MPs of Rodrigues who have traditionally sided with the party who has a majority in Mauritius. Subtract Danielle Selvon who left the Sun Trust about a year ago. And the 11 MPs of the PMSD. New total 41-28. ML has 7 representatives so if they leave the MSM would have 34 MPs while the opposition 35. Except that Marie-Claire Monty looks like she's going to stay in Government and the Mouvement Patriotique have already said they are ready to join Lepep. Which would bring us to 37-32. There may be a few defections at the MSM but there are a few MPs that are floating around in the ML and elsewhere that SAJ could tap into.

It wouldn't be the first time one of our governments managed Mauritius with a paper-thin majority. Trust you're enjoying one of the big advantages of our excellent FPTP system: partners of an alliance may leave but we'd still not have to go to the polls. At least not immediately.

Prosecution Commission: What Do You Think?

Government is rushing a bill to that effect these days. Antoine Domingue is dead against it and reminds us of what he predicted a couple of years ago. The fact that the proposed law is going to be retroactive has raised more than an eyebrow. And now the PMSD has just left government. And with it the super majority.

From Paris, Rawat Gives His Side of the Story

63% of Poll Say Ramgoolam's Side Won't Take More Than 30 Seats

4.6% think they will get a 60-0. While 31.6% say SAJ's party will grab at least 40 seats. Only 14.3% predict LP/MMM will get a 3/4 supermajority to screw up our excellent Constitution and system of Government. The scenario with the most votes -- and a 1/4 chance of happening -- is Ramgoolam/Bérenger ending up with between 21 and 25 seats. The next most popular pick is them getting five seats less.

Let's see. 

What Mauritian Voters Want on December 11

By and large, a Government with about 35 MPs and an Opposition with 25. They don't want a Government with a lot more seats because then it will start having funny ideas and do some really stupid things. Like messing up an excellent constitution. And they want policies that work for a majority of their fellow citizens not the kind of nonsense that we've seen since 2005.

It now appears that none of the two major political blocks -- thank God! -- will win three-quarters of the seats. Although Labour/MMM won all the seats in 1995 with 65% of the votes. In fact a little data analysis for that election -- which happened two decades ago -- will reveal that all we need for that alliance to shed 25 seats is a displacement of less than 16% of the voters. And about a 13% movement of voters should prevent them from grabbing 75% of the seats.

Shifts of these magnitudes have happened before. For example in 2005 LP/PMSD got 12.7 percentage points more votes than they had five years earlier. And the issues were not as important as they are now. For a hint of the kind of shift that may happen in a week we need to look at the change in the sum of the share of votes the IP and the PMSD received in 1967 and 1976. 44%.

Manifestos For Two Major Blocks Now Available

L'Alliance Lepep released its manifesto eight days ago while Labour/MMM did so today. Or 58 days after the people at Lalit made their electoral program available. And that has made the recommendation of Abraham Brilloff handy again.

Labour/MMM announced that they will increase old age pension to Rs4,000. This confirms at least two things: one is that they don't have a serious economic plan -- why are we not surprised? -- and two they've been on the defensive for the past month and a half. Lalit has 28 candidates of which 43% are women.

It also shows us how important it is to have a competitive democracy. Which is the foundation of both our electoral setup and system of government.

So the best outcome is that no block gets more than 35 seats and some toxic candidates don't get through.

Suddenly, Labour/MMM Alliance Promises 60,000 Jobs

Because a few weeks ago when Rama Sithanen was asked (scroll to 31m30s) how many jobs he would create in the first twelve months if he was to become the next finance minister -- God forbid -- he said he could not forecast that. He couldn't even give a rough estimation. Of course we can come up with a ballpark of how many jobs he might create because he's been FM for several years and we just have to look at his stats. Turns out we should expect around 7,200 jobs or 2.5X less than what Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo could create.

He also said that he would not be able to create jobs immediately. Hmm. We can estimate that too by looking at how many jobs were created in the first full calendar year -- we could look at monthly figures too -- he was in office in each one of his two terms. That number is around 8,300 jobs. But given that he messed up the economy so badly and that he increased unemployment every single year in his first mandate and in every full calendar year of his second that could be really hard to achieve.

Mr. Sithanen also says he will eradicate poverty. He said that before. I'm sure you remember he said he could do that in 7 years. The snag is that it's almost ten years since his bogus reforms have started. And far from eliminating poverty he has thrown an additional 22,000 Mauritians into it during his second term. That's about 350 people every four weeks. And his inflation record doesn't look too good.

So I guess they've thrown this number to look a lot less silly. And to try to be a bit less on the defensive. After lalyans lepep announced their 12 measures.

Sega de lane 2014?

Mauritian FB Pages With The Most Likes

I googled but didn't find any lists. But it's not difficult to get a rough idea:

Air Mauritius: 520,672; L'express: 207,879; Lux* Island Resorts: 123,358; MCB: 104,479; Beachcomber: 72,249; Defimedia Group: 45,843; PMSD: 31,432; ION News: 31,348; SBM: 30,213; MMM: 30,172; Parti Malin: 27,975; Mauritius Labour Party: 27,825; Courts: 25, 268; Le Mauricien: 18,863; Flying Dodo Brewing Company: 13,670; J Kalachand: 5,474; MSM: 5,055; MPCB: 2,710; Le Matinal: 1,564; Kozelidir: 288 (Yahoo!); Conserverie Sarjua: 177.

So the PMSD and Party Malin have more likes than the Labour Party. I guess these two parties will win by a landslide in the next general elections. MK looks like it will be the first company to hit a million likes. When you deal with more than 1 million passengers every year surely it's no big surprise that you are right on the top here. But likes don't necessarily mean a lot as people like pages for all kinds of reasons. And page administrators don't all do as good a job.

Municipal Voters Send Multiple Signals

The first one is that they're not exactly happy with the trickle-down policies of Navin Ramgoolam since 2005. So they took at least 3 towns away from his control. And he's being given an umpteenth chance to sober up.

The next one is to Remake 2000. We are not happy with Ramgoolam but we don't think you are much better. More importantly it is a confirmation that Berenger has been at the helm of the MMM for too long: he was not able to capitalise on five years of Paglanomics in 2010. And yesterday he did not win the five towns.

The third one is to Steve Obeegadoo. You or your party don't own our votes. We vote as we want. And we'll do exactly the same thing in 2015. Just watch us.

And one to the MMSD. We liked the way you campaigned. We want you to decide who will run Curepipe. We might want you to decide who will run Mauritius in 2015.

SAJ Prefers Remaining in Karo Kann

Than to see MSM join the Labour government. And denied any ongoing negotiations with the party currently in power. The only problem is that he said the same thing -- if not worse -- a few weeks before the last general elections two years ago.

Besides the Remake 2000 (sounds like a car model, eh?) has just gone through a cooling-off period precisely because the MMM believed that the MSM was trying to get back in government.

Interesting. Remake sealed in April. Cooling-off period in July. Love is in the air.

Nintendo Player Ends Cooling-off Period

Because he is not convinced that Ramgoolam is serious about presenting a bill to modify the constitutional set up in Parliament. So he will resume talks with the MSM this week. But as he has a big preference for an alliance with the Labour Party expect more zig-zags, about-faces, kustiks and what not.

In the meantime the chess-player improves his majority to 38-31 after poaching MP Bholah from the MSM. Labour now has all three MPs in the riding that returned the former President -- and one of the challengers to Navin Ramgoolam -- many times to parliament.

What now? A couple of defections from the MMM?

Remake's Gathering Deciphered

I just stumbled on this funny report of last Sunday's rally. Enjoy.