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. 

How a PM Can Leave a Strong Legacy

Why the Dutch Are Smart

Recent Evolution of Mauritius Has Been Unhealthy

One Reason the FPTP System is So Good

Can’t Find Referendum in Electoral Manifestos

Searched for the word in the manifestos of the three main political blocks but didn’t find it. It’s not in the 15 key measures of the MSM/ML alliance although it was there in the social contract of the Lepep Alliance in 2014 when there were only 12 key measures. That’s a pretty bad sign when you add surveillance state and the flat tax.

What was not difficult to find was the French word for sugar. It popped up fast at least a few times in each one of them. So these three parties will keep us mired in a low-growth trap for the next few years if we vote for them. We don’t have to. 

Bérenger Says He’s the Real Miracle Man

And not Lutchmeenaraidoo because he did all the work after the 60-0 in 1982. This is another funny statement from him because he was Minister of Finance for only nine months and if you read Cuttaree’s Behind The Purple Curtain you can’t fail to notice that about the only thing they were busy doing until March 1983 was fighting each other inside the alliance. This of course leaves even less time to do good work. Furthermore if a neophyte in 1982 can create an ‘economic miracle’ with one budget surely he will be able to do at least as well if he ever returned as Finance Minister later.

The trouble for Bérenger is that he did return as Finance Minister in 2000 and got the chance to present not one but three budgets. And what did Cuttaree have to say about the state of the economy after those budgets? Something very interesting: “Nous sommes en urgence économique. La situation est sans précédent.” It was a period in which almost twenty-three thousands jobs were lost in one industry alone in a few years. Mr. Bérenger of course described the situation differently dubbing Mauritius the best managed country in the world. What else to expect from a party with more than a little penchant for self-aggrandisement?

Knowledge about the economy is not something that the MMM seemed to have got better at since. Reza Uteem, their shadow Finance Minister, was heard a couple of years ago on a radio saying that the offshore sector needs a stimulus package. The MMM has also set saving the dead sugar industry as a top priority in its electoral manifesto. It doesn’t do well on other important national issues either. 

Did Trickle-down Economics Work in Mauritius?

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.

Why Subron’s Mixing of Issues is Dangerous

I totally agree that we shouldn’t have to declare one of four communities to stand as a candidate. But where I definitely disagree with him is that we should include a dose of PR, go for double-candidacies and that 20 extra MPs is no big deal.

Adding a dose of PR will lead to chronic political instability, double candidacies will make it more difficult to keep really bad MPs out of parliament while our National Assembly is already too big and should be downsized, not enlarged.

No need to drag Krouink into the debate. This faux-patriotism shouldn’t fool anybody. 

Fact-Checking A Few Sithanen Statements

He said recently that his flat tax had increased government revenue by 20% in the first year of its implementation, that it had attracted a lot of investments from abroad, produced growth rates of more than 5% and had created 10,000 jobs per year. 

1. Government revenue may increase if growth is better or if you increase the tax rate or tax more things. Growth had increased in 2006 because the economy rebounded after the big textile contraction. He should tell us by how much revenue increased in every year since his flat tax was implemented. Besides the main reason to slash top tax rates to 15% was to get 8% growth rates. As chart shows we never got those growth rates even in the decade following the end of the Great Recession – just check how many consecutive years we didn’t even get half of that. And this will cause a government revenue shortfall approaching Rs360bn at the end of the year. 

2. We surely got a lot of FDI (Rs189bn between 2006 and 2018) but this pales in comparison to the Rs570bn savings missing after he killed the savings culture. And the FDI has mostly been speculative ensuring that thousands will not be able to become home-owners. 

3. Finally what kind of jobs are we talking here? Definitely not good jobs. Otherwise growth rates would have been higher, savings would have rebounded and there would never had been the need for the controversial stimulus package.

Mauritius and Global Warming

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?

Top 10 Narrowest General Elections

Missing Savings Casts New Light on Flat Tax Damage

Was Lepep’s Growth Performance Better?

Intense Cyclones Didn’t Destroy Our Resilience

Meet Something A Lot Better Than the Gini Coefficient

It’s called share of income growth. It looks at how the increase in GDP over a given period has been distributed among the different income groups. The clip below shows what happened after a most regressive policy was adopted. 

Savings-Killer Misses Elephant in the Room

In April 2017 Sithanen said that the tram express would be a financial disaster because it would fail to cover costs and saddle future generations with debt. This was kind of funny for the bean-counter to say because as the chart shows government has had a revenue shortfall in all the years since 2006 which is the year he implemented his economic snake oil aka flat tax – there’s a flat-tax-related deficit as soon as growth is lower than the promised 8%.

In fact as from 2013 the revenue deficit caused by his regressive tax policies had grown big enough to fully pay for at least one 19-billion-rupee tram every single year – two as from 2016 and three as from last year. So in total there’s enough government money missing over the past fourteen years to pay for at least 10 trams (15 when you add the figures for the first seven years and the sums left over in the other seven).

In the meantime central government budgetary debt has risen by Rs172bn over the same period without any major national problems getting solved. I wonder if future generations will enjoy the terrible mess we’re in as much as we are.

It’s great we’re voting soon.