77% of Poll Find Vishnu Better Finance Minister

Than Sithanen. And that too by a very large margin. Only 22% found Sithanen better. Voters from all walks of life and parties are not exactly happy with this choice of Ramgoolam. We're gonna find out how much on Thursday.

Poll Says SAJ Better PM, By Very Large Margin

More than 3/4 of the 165 voters found the 84-year old politician a better PM. Ramgoolam got 15% -- that's five times less -- and Bérenger a paltry 6%. Ramgoolam might have become the second best PM -- after SSR -- had he been able to redeem himself. That didn't happen. And it actually got worse.

42% of Poll Find Our Westminsterian System of Government Excellent

Or 55 people of the 129 votes this poll received. Another 43% say it's average while only 13% found it pretty bad. Might there be a zom-pom dom-tom effect here?

Resources For The December 10 Elections

Who will you vote for? Well it will have to be three of these candidates.

Where will you vote? Enter your NIC# and the Electoral Commissioner's office will tell you where that will be. That's specially useful if it's the first time you're voting.

Who's the better cake-cutter? That is who divides the national cake more reasonably. I've looked at the HBS data for the past 25 years and it all boils down to who is the Finance Minister. Lutchmeenaraidoo -- at least in the data analysed -- has been good. So have Bunwaree and Bheenick. Sithanen has been a reverse Robin Hood -- takes from the poor to give to rich -- each time he's been MoF. So he's to be avoided at all costs.

Who bakes the bigger cake? Have looked at this data recently and what I've found is that Lutchmeenaraidoo baked a bigger one than the FMs who came after him; the Sithanen reforms generated the smallest cake and that Bheenick and Bunwaree hatched a cake which was slightly bigger than what Sithanen cooked in his first mandate. More on this soon.

Of course we don't want a second republic, party lists, more MPs and double candidacies.

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.

While You Were Sleeping

Suren Dayal was nominated as Minister of Education when Vasant Bunwaree resigned. This happened of course thanks to our excellent Constitution which makes these kinds of changes take place seamlessly.

It's not the first time we're experiencing our excellent Constitution. And definitely not the last. And if our Constitution is so good it's because a number of great and selfless minds have poured over various drafts of it and have iterated to yield something that's literally timeless. For sure we started from a very good base: the British version of a Parliamentary democracy.

Which makes it very different from what one clown has proposed.

Aren't you happy you're voting soon?

Our Polls Are Back

We have 5 great polls for you:

1. is what do you think about our Westmininsterian System of Government.

2. how many seats will Ramgoolam's alliance take?

3. who is the better Prime Minister: SAJ, PB or NR?

4. who is a better FM: VL or RS?

and 5. is about the number of MPs we already have in Parliament.

Happy voting!!!

Gulbul Confirms Sithanen Proposal is Constitutional Galimatia

If you listen carefully to what he said on radio this week. Given that they are proposing to shift the power to dissolve Parliament to an elected President this changes the nature of our democratic system and will therefore require a referendum where a supermajority -- 75% -- of voters give the nod as well as a unanimous vote in Parliament. He has cited Privy Council interpretations of section 1 of our Constitution as basis for his analysis. He joins two colleagues who have promised to go to court if leaders start choosing MPs.

See I told you the bean-counter had no business on one committee. It also shows that collectively Mauritians are very smart. Which would explain why the bill hasn't been released yet. They know it's amateurish at best. And don't want to look silly again. After it is thrashed unceremoniously.

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.

30 Years Ago Indira Gandhi Was Assasinated

On October 31st 1984 to be more precise. I remember not initially understanding how she could have been shot multiple times. Only to learn a bit later that two of her bodyguards had assassinated her with their service guns. Ms. Gandhi was a great friend of Mauritius and visited us a few times. Here she is on one of these trips being welcomed by Kher Jagatsingh as my mum, tonton Raymond and tante Jacqueline Rault look on. The guy just behind the Prime Minister of India is of course our own SSR.

This picture brings back a lot of memories. One such memory is the late Camille Moutou lamenting at a SELEX -- an organisation for the elderly in Mauritius -- dinner a few years ago: "Kot zot pu kav vo nu bann dirizan sa".

Indeed Camille.

Who Will Be Better at Tackling Unemployment?

Some people -- who seem to have a penchant for Paglanomics -- have said that whatever Vishnu has achieved before is not doable again because the circumstances are different blah blah blah. But given that Sithanen took over almost immediately -- SAJ presented a budget in between -- from Lutchmeenaraidoo in 1991 we can look at what happened to some of the most important macroeconomic indicators when the ministerial baton was being passed. For an indication of relative skill as the environment was more or less the same. 

For example the rate of unemployment around that period offers some fascinating insights. As the chart illustrates Vishnu decreased the unemployment rate every single year from 14.8% in 1985 to 2.8% in 1990. But the story changes as soon as Rama takes over. Indeed he increased the unemployment rate every single year. From 2.7% to 5.1%. And he increased it with surprising regularity: by exactly 0.6%. Which makes it so easy to remember. 

I've also listened carefully to interviews of the two gentlemen about the economy on radio. Mr. Lutchmenaraidoo comes across as a pleasant, humble and competent person with a serious plan. And Dr. Sithanen the exact opposite.

Mauritian Democracy Competitive Again

From a very low point a few months back in our Parliament when Berenger was trying to prevent Jugnauth Jr. from doing one of the things we send MPs there: debate important pieces of legislation. In that particular case the dumb amendment proposed by Sithanen. We then had that period where Ramgoolam and Berenger announced their alliance and told us that they were sure to win all the seats in the next general elections as their parties represented 40% of the electorate each. With Berenger adding that when that would happen we could count on him to not bully the little -- I guess, extra-parliamentary -- parties. Yeah, right.

That was kind of funny of course because when an alliance had won all the seats -- in 1982 and 1995 -- it got only 65% of the votes. Not 80%. And the next election is not going to be an average election. Nope. We're talking of a really wicked plan to screw up three things: our system of government, our electoral system and the livelihoods of a majority of Mauritians. So a month ago it seemed that there was a pretty good chance that lalyans pep tuni would not even get 3/4 of the seats. But that was before the national rallies of October 12.

Since then everybody knows it's going to be a tight election. And thank God it is.

Sega de lane 2014?

June Happy Pistorius Gonna Pay Something

Even though Oscar might be out after a year. June is the mother of Reeva Steenkamp who was shot dead in Pistorius's bathroom on Valentine's Day last year. So today's sentencing is bringing closure to at least some members of the victim's family.

How Many Jobs Might Vishnu Create in a Year?

We cannot know precisely but given that he's been finance minister long enough we can look at his jobs record and compute an average. This turns out to be 18,243 per year if we use data between 1984 and 1990. We can look at Sithanen's data too. As the chart illustrates it's 7,200 a year on average. That's 2.5X slower. Now if you'll please excuse me I've got something to pick up in Stockholm.

Lalit Beefs Up YouTube Presence

Want a big bowl of fresh air? Just listen to Cindy Clelie.



When you're done you don't want to miss Lindsey Collen's explanation of the dangers of the biometric ID card.

Why Sithanen Won't Eliminate Poverty

Simply because he's so good at creating it. See, at the end of Ramgoolam's first mandate -- Bheenick and Bunwaree were his Finance Ministers -- there were only 500 more poor people than five years earlier. But at the end of Ramgoolam's second -- I guess you recall who was Finance Minister -- there were an additional 22,000 Mauritians that had been thrown into poverty. That's a staggering 44 times more. Or if you prefer almost 2.5 times the 8,902 votes Sithanen got at the end of his first stint as FM back in the 1995 general elections when his party was routed with a 60-0.

There are only two reasons to create so much poverty. One is you love doing that. The other is you don't have the slightest clue what you are doing. In either case I don't think we want someone with that kind of a skills mismatch to be our next Finance Minister.

Parliament Dissolved in Trivial Manner

The people of Mauritius learned about it by way of communique Monday afternoon. It didn't look any more serious on that evening's JT: it took the newscaster a mere 10 seconds. People not familiar with the importance of elections in a democracy might argue that it would have been perfectly ok to make the announcement somewhere in the weather report. Maybe before telling us how much rain Mon Loisir Rouillard got in the last 24 hours.

It's the first time Ramgoolam didn't do a press point to formally announce it to us. But we have to understand. 2014 has been a very heavy year for our MPs. And it's already the third term that our PM is completing. Well sort of.

I guess dissolving Parliament is the right thing to do as there are no major problems in the country. That can be solved by our Parliament by January 14, 2015. Which is 100 days -- time it takes to apparently change lives -- from now. Or by April 24, 2015. 200 days from now. Or enough time to apparently change lives two times. And less than five years since the last time we went to vote. Everything is going swimmingly.

Your Free Guide To Recent Additions on The Jag!

Sithanen trying to be funny: he's worried that the savings rate is too low. It's like the dog which is scandalised that the sausages that were left under its supervision are gone. We show the extent of the unmitigated mess created by his severe skills mismatch as Finance Minister and why his story doesn't add up.

Our first piece on electoral reform appeared in April. We show how government has been wasting precious time on this issue and how by adopting the dumb and dangerous Sithanen report we're not going anywhere good. We have a critical look at the criteria the state wants to use and propose a couple. We also list some of the interesting ideas that surfaced.

We connect two dots that have the potential to dramatically shrink our democratic space: the 15% flat tax and the perverse Sithanen Electoral Galimatia (SEG).

In our second piece on electoral reform we show that we don't have to seriously reduce the democratic space to meet the UNHRC ruling and make our excellent FPTP system a little less unfair. We also illustrate how quotas for women translate into a glass ceiling. And that our parliament is already too big. Finally we show how the concept of opposition MPs offers a simple -- not simplistic -- solution.

The third instalment on electoral reform makes the point that the constitutional amendment is flawed. And comes forward with a governance-based alternative. While highlighting the urgency of referendum legislation.

A piece on Gandhi's transformation: from shy person to anything but. With a nice personal story about Filip Fanchette.