From Ethical Foundations to Mediocrity: The State of Democracy and Leadership

Ultimately, voters will decide whether the country can afford more of the same for another five years, whether the transactional leadership style and the horizons of “what’s in it for me?” are sufficient to guide the country forward

Politics and Governance

By Dr S. Callikan

Democracy is a form of government built on a foundation of ethical principles and it cannot survive unless those principles are honoured and protected. Values matter and unethical leadership that undermines the democratic process, is a threat to democracy itself. In democracy we do not each get our way, but we must respect the right we all have to work with our fellow Mauritian travellers and address our challenges in a way that moves us forward as a people. Respect for the rights of others in a multi-cultural context is essential.

Good leaders do not divide our nation to remain in office, but rather, they bring people together through the core values and processes underpinning our young democratic fabric. That was the hallmark of SSR’s statesman’s like leadership when, with his team mates and colleagues, he first brought political independence to our shores and shortly thereafter entered into alliance with his principal opponent, SGD, to pacify the troubled island nation, take the private sector on board and together lay the foundation stones for all our future economic development.

Free primary and secondary education, the first University, the national broadcaster, health, social security and universal pensions, infrastructure, food distribution program for all schoolchildren, social housing, sugar industry welfare schemes, the challenges in a regularly cyclone-battered island were enormous, the social and trades-union scenes restless and the competing priorities for scarce financial resources multiple. While the state of emergency in the seventies certainly was a blot, the successor Bleu-Blanc-Rouge governments of 1983 onwards inherited the necessary foundations to draw on the disquiet of Hong-Kong and Taiwanese businessmen to successfully launch our export-driven textile revolution. Jobs and salaries were no longer tied up with sugar-cane seasonality or cyclonic vagaries and so too was the influx of foreign exchange.

That is a rather sketchy recall of the early eighties’ developments and the rise of the MSM, which astutely leveraged partner strengths and various political alliances to hold on to power. If, since then, some form of values-led leadership had been subtly undermined by cynicism and opportunistic alliances, observers might question whether political leadership has become increasingly transactional. Instead of John F. Kennedy’s famous exhortation, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,” the electorate might now be asking, “What’s in it for me?”

After the troubled spell from 2015-2019 under SAJ’s waning leadership, the theme for the MSM-led dispensation in 2019, « Ensam tou possib », was plausibly intended to reflect that we are all in this boat together and we must all work together for the greater good of our nation. The incoming PM, Pravind Kumar Jugnauth, rather new at the job and inheritor of SAJ’s mantle, has often times stressed that he has some guiding « principles » in life and politics and sticks by them. Do those public statements stand scrutiny and how that experiment fared is a question that voters will have to decide on shortly.

The first level of introspection is ethical or moral. During the Watergate investigation, President Richard Nixon’s supporters would often argue that because they agreed with his policy positions, they could overlook his ethical and moral shortcomings.  In the Trumpian cult-world, there is a widespread belief that ethical leadership is not important, or even relevant, so long as elected officials advance policies which the top leadership advocate, even if they don’t agree privately.  Boris Johnson, the UK’s flamboyant PM, had to hang his head in shame in Parliament and was forced to an ignominious exit by his own party, when an official report detailed the extent of partying in No.10 when the country’s population was under Covid lockdown. Late French PM Francois Fillon has been condemned in courts, after all appeals, for fictitious payments to his wife and children for constituency representation jobs they never performed.

Ignoring the moral or ethical dimensions of political leadership can have therefore costly consequences, but the risks are deeper and broader if the erosion of public trust affects key institutions in the checks and balances of democracy. On that score the PM and his government have a patchy record, one Minister sacked in the St Louis gate affair, another negotiated out of Cabinet for Covid procurement misdemeanours, while still another, had been trapped in unsavoury allegations of corrupt land deals while wining and partying in the Grand-Bassin immediate vicinity. Those facts are made worse by the lack of any meaningful investigation in any of these high-profile cases which heightens the public perception of political cronyism and expediency rather than values, principles and morals.

Justice exists only when there is fairness and a greater rather than lesser degree of transparency and accountability in the process of governing. It’s not just a matter of knowing how and why a stadium of 4,000 capacity at Côte d’Or, budgeted after revision at some Rs 1.5 billion, ended up costing taxpayers more than Rs 5 billion, almost twice the cost of the 500-bed brand-new teaching hospital to be inaugurated in Flacq. Or what are the exact financials, losses and public debts of Metro Express or Air Mauritius. Or the situation of reserves at the National Pension Fund or at the Bank of Mauritius and its policy with respect to the national currency’s continuous slide. That slide coupled with the high taxes/VAT on diesel fuel have compounded inflationary pressures, towards which an uninspired leadership doles out monies that are swept up in the vicious spiral. Proper accountability and we may add, fair human resource policies, for all publicly funded concerns are an essential norm of public trust in our democracy.

Public trust and democratic values require that those in leadership positions consider that regularly or consistently preventing opponents from asking Ministers public interest questions in Parliament undermines trust in those entrusted with legislating and implementing policies for the larger good. If the previous Speaker has been unceremoniously ditched after four years of loyal service and an opposition PMSD member appointed, it is evident that the population sees this as a sign of the MSM’s desperation for an alliance partner now that their position is precarious, as well as the PMSD’s cynical abandonment of its former values and principles.

Without some deeper changes there are reasons to suspect that with such shenanigans, many of our brighter youths, and even our laureates, may opt to stay in foreign abodes where they studied rather than return to a climate where talent, skills, or advanced training are overshadowed by political party affiliations. A country whose best and brightest leave, while a third or more of its schoolchildren are left behind in a competition-driven education system, faces the prospect of mediocrity. This intellectual desolation is exemplified by the National Assembly, where no Minister or Government backbencher has delivered a remarkable speech in the past five years, even at the risk of displeasing their leaders.

Ultimately, voters will decide whether the country can afford more of the same for another five years, whether the transactional leadership style and the horizons of “what’s in it for me?” are sufficient to guide the country forward at a critical juncture of our history. In the quiet of the urns, regardless of the benefits one has received or perceived, each person makes a choice, and that choice may impact future generations. In the USA, Vice-President Kamala Harris, against the transactional style of Trump, has more than any other world political leader, turned the voters around in less than three weeks of campaigning, to a narrative of hope, solidarity, ethical government and values-led leadership. The sort of messaging that could hopefully inspire our own nation and voters.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 16 August 2024