QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"When you're taking flak, you must be over the target"
-- Jim Robinson

Points To Ponder

The electorate does not owe politicians anything 

A First Point: I have always maintained that the link between the politicians and the electors is very brittle and it can snap off at any moment on the slightest pretext. Therefore politicians must know that the electors do not vote for politicians, but rather against them. Electors are a hungry lot, always clamouring for something, and the moment they do not get what they want, they start looking towards the politicians of the other side to see to what extent they would be ready to fulfil their wish. It matters little whether the promise can be realized or not, it is just sufficient for the politicians on the other side to promise that they will do what the electorate wants and the trick is done. And at the next general election, it matters little that the party that won last time will lose this time in an endless cycle of victory and defeat. That is Mauritian politics and we have to live with it as it is practised here.

What is the current feeling of the electorate on certain issues that are of concern to them?

1. People say that government announced that the price of medicine would go down. They say that the price has gone not down but up. What does the minister concerned have to say? Does he or she still say the price of medicine has really gone down? What does the minister of Finance say? He announced that patients would be benefiting from those price decreases but are they really benefiting? Government must speak out on the disparity between what it is promising and what is actually happening.

2. People are saying that some traders are downright dishonest. In certain outlets, they are selling “du riz ration” packed in plastic bags as “riz de luxe” at a far higher price than “du riz ration” and they are making a hefty profit, though illegally. Does the minister concerned know about this fact? If yes, what is the minister doing? People must be made aware of what is being done to help them.

3. People accept that there is economic progress in the country, but this progress is for the benefit of only a certain class of Mauritians and it does not concern the majority of the people. I agree that it is difficult to explain what is being done on the economic front, but government must get the right people to do the explaining and the minister must take the lead in this matter. Government must tell people how they are benefiting from the economic progress achieved by the country.

4. People are not satisfied with the services offered by the Police, nor with the behaviour of quite a number of police officers and the manner in which they address members of the public. It is known to almost everyone that some police officers  are involved in the demanding or taking of bribes. Everybody says so but it seems that the authorities are blissfully unaware of this fact.

5. We know that civil servants are there to serve the members of the public. Their title itself, that of servants, serves to indicate what they are, but they consider themselves as being the masters and members of the public are supposed to serve them, in one way or another. Of course there are exceptions among civil servants as well.

6. Two ministries at least are not functioning to the satisfaction of the public. They are the ministry of Health and the ministry of Housing and Lands. Maybe people tend to compare how a previous minister of Health was performing to give satisfaction to patients. People still talk of Kishore Deerpalsingh as the best minister of Health yet.

7. The ministry that has the responsibility of price control is another institution that does not give satisfaction to many Mauritians. People say that the price of every article of daily consumption is increasing to such an extent that they are getting poorer by the day, not by the month.

There are other subjects that demand quick response from the various ministries, and given time, we shall point out the areas wherein such responses are required.

A journalist can only draw the attention of the authorities and of the government. If they fail to act and the people take the measures they think appropriate, then nobody is to be blamed but the politicians, not the functionaries. When the functionaries do not deliver as expected, then the politicians have to take the blame.

Politicians must understand that that the electorate does not owe them anything, on the contrary it is said that it is the politicians who owe everything to the electorate. Do not expect any gratitude from the people, for in politics they never are. 

Are the rich getting richer, the poor poorer?

A Second Point: The Reserve Bank of India has been increasing the Prime Lending Rate (PLR) of banks for sometime past and the deposit rates for customers follow the increase of the Prime Lending Rate. The policy of the Reserve Bank of India is to give priority to control inflation and inflationary tendencies. Inflation level in India is around 12% and the Reserve Bank of India feels that there must be further tightening of monetary policy by raising the Repo Rate, the rate at which the RBI lends to banks and by increasing the Cash Reserve Ratio, that amount that banks must keep in reserve as a percentage of the amount that they lend.

Since April last, the Reserve Bank of India has increased the Repo Rate by as much as 125 basis points and the Cash Reserve Ratio by 150 basis points. The Reserve Bank of India maintains a projection of 8% of Gross Domestic Product for year 2008-09, although it gives top priority to inflation management to bring it down to 7% by the end of the financial year. Would both targets be met? It is very difficult to say.

India’s economy is huge, even in world terms. Some of the biggest countries are already suffering from a downturn in their economic progress. Many of them have GDP of about 1% and at most of 3%. The two exceptions are India and China. They show a growth of between 7% and 10% in spite of the difficulties that other supposedly advanced countries are facing.

Interest sensitive sectors are not happy but the message to raise interest rates is loud and clear and unambiguous. Banks raise interest rates and thus slow credit expansion. And this is done to control inflation.

What is the policy of the Bank of Mauritius to control inflation? The question should be whether the authorities, that is the Bank of Mauritius, and the government are more interested to damp down inflation or they are more interested to export more manufactured goods from Mauritius. It is a very difficult question to answer. Economists worldwide are not agreed on the subject and our economists are no exception.

May I put the question differently? I am putting this question as a completely lay person in economic matters. I am simply trying to use my brain. Which of the two alternatives would be more beneficial to the majority of Mauritians in the short term, in the medium term and in the long term? We must remember that people are more concerned with what they can get in the short term and they do not prefer to wait for the medium or long term, though they might benefit more if they can wait.

You must also remember that if you do not create wealth, you can share only what you have, that is misery, and people are not satisfied with that, not at all. But remember, people are saying that the rich are getting richer whereas the others are not able to maintain their present standard of living; on the contrary they are getting poorer and poorer. My idea is that inflation must be controlled as a matter of priority, well before the industrialists are helped. Inflation will do more harm to the people than the good that low interest rates will do to the industrialists.

This is a very complex situation that government has to face. On its own it is already complex, but it is made still more difficult by an opposition that is bent on demagogy, instead of telling the people what the real economic situation is both in the world as well as in Mauritius. The opposition is interested in taking over the government and that is all they have as their policy. Maybe that is only as far as they can see.  

MMM-MSM Alliance: 40-20, or 30-30?

A Third Point: We have not had any political activity this week that would deserve particular attention. The Labour Party held its executive party meeting and it would seem that the party is satisfied with its performance in the government. It does not seem to be very much concerned at reports of a soon-to-be-concluded alliance between the MMM and the MSM because, it says, “the alliance has not been concluded up to now”.

I personally find that an alliance between the MMM and the MSM would be very difficult to materialize, and this for many reasons. Let us point out to some of them.

1. Pravind Jugnauth says that Paul Bérenger knows very well the reason why their alliance (grouping the MMM, the MSM and the PMSD) lost the last general election and I take it that Pravind Jugnauth means that the reason was because Paul Bérenger was a candidate for the post of Prime Minister. For the next election therefore Paul Bérenger should not have the ambition to be the candidate for the post of Prime Minister. Maybe he will be sent to Le Reduit as the President of the Republic. But in such circumstances, a very important question arises: if Paul Bérenger will not lead the MMM in the next general election and he will not be presented as a future Prime Minister, the followers of the MMM and of Paul Bérenger will not be interested in voting for the party. And people will know that after the election Paul Bérenger will be forced to move to Le Reduit, if such is the policy of the MSM. We have always said, and I maintain it, that Paul Bérenger is the MMM and the MMM is Paul Bérenger. If the life of the party is no longer present in the party, the party cannot exist; it is as simple as that.

If Paul Bérenger is presented as the prime ministerial candidate, the majority of the Hindu, Muslim and Chinese electors will not vote for the MMM-MSM-PMSD alliance, and a substantial portion of the General Population electors will adopt the same attitude. Pravind Jugnauth has seen clearly what the majority of the electors think.

However, Paul Bérenger says that he will be the candidate for the post of Prime Minister for the first two and a half years, obviously leaving the second two and a half for Pravind Jugnauth. I do understand that Paul Bérenger does not want to serve under Pravind Jugnauth (who thinks that he will be the Prime Minister) in any capacity whatsoever. The reason is clear, there is no need to expound on it. Who of Paul Bérenger and Pravind Jugnauth will give in at the end of the day?

2. Paul Bérenger and his sous-fifres have maintained time and again that the MMM is the strongest party in the country, that it does not need any crutches, any bequilles to win the next general election and that anyway the MMM will take at least 40 tickets for itself for the next general election and the remaining tickets will be shared among the other parties in whatever alliance they will form. Now I hear Paul Bérenger saying that he will share on a 30-30 basis the 60 tickets with Pravind Jugnauth, what would happen to the parties newly attracted to the MMM, like the party of Dinesh Ramjuttun, the party of Raj Dayal, the party of Ashock Jugnauth and other smaller parties? What would happen to newly-recruited members like Vijay Makhan, Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo, Miss Dayal and so many others? Would they all be accommodated in the MMM with the 30 tickets? Very soon the newcomers who have joined the MMM not out of any political conviction but rather for personal reasons, will outnumber the old-timers who have always been sincere to the party and above all else, they have shown their utter sincerity towards the leader. So would the MMM accept only 30 tickets for the next general election?

3. Ashock Jugnauth has said that he will not be in an alliance of which Pravind Jugnauth and the MSM will be a part. As Paul Bérenger is keen to have this MMM-MSM alliance, it is clear that he has already chosen the party with which he will be fighting the next general election and therefore Ashock Jugnauth can obviously no longer remain with the MMM. I am thinking of the days when Ashock Jugnauth was encouraged to abandon the MSM, when he was told that he was of prime ministerial stuff and we were all expecting that very soon he would be presented as the candidate for the post of Prime Minister. What is happening to him these days, when he finds himself in the middle of nowhere? In politics, a person cannot ever trust a politician, least of all a politician who passes himself as a friend, because in the sphere of politics there is no friendship. So long as the interests of the particular politician is served, the politician will show a semblance of gratitude to the person who is helping him. After that, it is simply good-bye for ever.

What can Ashock Jugnauth do? He is not in politics pour faire de la figuration. He wants to play the main part, to succeed, and in order to do so, he has to hitch himself to a party that will help him realize his ambition. But that party has to accept Ashock Jugnauth in the first instance. Otherwise, Ashock Jugnauth will have to give up politics and maybe go back to his profession. Politics has been responsible for the great divide in the Jugnauth family, when at one time this family was known for its clannish solidarity. Does Paul Bérenger really believe that Pravind Jugnauth will better help him to achieve his political ambition than Ashock Jugnauth? I do not think so. The door of the MMM is not definitely closed for Ashock Jugnauth, he still has his chance, though an outsider’s chance. Should that chance materialize, I do not see any chance of any alliance between the MMM and the MSM, but we never know.

Bérenger vs Valayden

A Fourth Point: Still on politics. In our political drama, we now have a comic interlude when we consider things from our point of view. And the two actors in this interlude are Paul Bérenger and Rama Valayden. Paul Bérenger started playing his tune of allegations, he finetuned his allegations and started going all over the country to propagate the message. He has a ready and willing audience in his numerous followers and they are always ready to swallow whatever is vomited by the leader.

At the receiving end is no other than Rama Valayden who is well known in the legal circle as the defender of criminals, big and small, when he was practising at the Bar. Has he severed all ties with his erstwhile clients now that he is the Attorney General and Minister of Justice? He should because ethics demands that a Minister of Justice should be for the administration of Justice, not in favour of the prosecution or of the defence, not in favour of the plaintiff nor in favour of the defendant.

Rama Valayden has decided to take seriously the allegations made against him by Paul Bérenger. Everybody knows that Paul Bérenger has the habit of making allegations right, left and centre and what the allegations are worth, and in the circumstances, people do not take them seriously. Paul Bérenger comes up with all sorts of allegations simply to derail his opponents and if those opponents are taken in by this trick they feel that they should give up politics. Bérenger will then have done his job and he feels happy. He also thinks, but only thinks, that he has found the weak spot of the government.

Paul Bérenger tries very hard, but in the end does he ever succeed? This time also it seems that he has not succeeded. Let us wait for another occasion when Paul Bérenger might succeed.

What would one expect from Paul Bérenger in these circumstances if he were a really serious politician? That he would report the matter to the police authorities pointing out that what Rama Valayden has done is a criminal offence, asking for the matter to be investigated and that if there is evidence, prosecution should follow.

And what would one expect from Rama Valayden if he were a really serious politician? That he would seize the Court with a civil case for slander against Paul Bérenger claiming millions of rupees as damages for making such serious allegations against him, which according to him are false.

But neither will go through the proper channel, for the entertainment of those who love an interlude in serious politics. Otherwise, how are we to have a good laugh at the expense of our not-so-intelligent politicians? Should we not be given the opportunity to thank them and show them our gratitude?

LEX