Governing Mauritius: Municipal Elections, Democratic Reforms, and Workforce Challenges

Opinion

By Jan Arden

The political calendar these coming days sees the preparations and meetings for the upcoming budget unfold but townsfolk of some 400,000+ electors will have the opportunity to sway to the tunes of Municipal elections scheduled for the 4th of May 2025. Meantime government would be working on a comprehensive redesign of our democratic landscape with the progressive irrelevance of our traditional rural-urban divide. This may mean several things, each worthy of its own consideration.

For instance, the extent to which the role and responsibilities of women in the political arena can be helped through quotas even on a transition basis. Or the relationship and equilibrium between a necessary but light central government oversight and the administrative freedoms of regional councils. In that context, the freebie granted by the previous regime of abolishing municipal rates has to be swept aside while the ability of those regional bodies to find innovative ways to harness better input from economic operators in their regions, without risking hoodwink schemes, has to receive attention from lawmakers.

Internal and external auditing capacities have to be strengthened to prevent laws being circumvented and public monies flowing to party apparatchiks and their boys. Their responsibilities in public infrastructure of roads and by-passes, drains clean-up and flooding mitigation, in dozens of minutiae like street lighting, market fair operations or public health dispensaries can be broadened.

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Municipalisation of Mauritius

What has also been termed the municipalisation of all Mauritius, placing similar levels of responsibilities and standards of transparency or good governance on all is another step that needs greater reflection in the context of our small island state. With the PPS being replaced by Junior Ministers, the task of following up on demand for projects across the country, rural in particular, has to be sized up. These are no doubt only some avenues for planning and implementing reform of our collective governance cadres.

It must be recalled that the last batch of our town councillors and mayors were elected on 14th June 2015 and have looked increasingly frayed as the previous Jugnauth regime repeatedly postponed the democratic exercise due in 2020. The MSM and its allies, recognising that what they themselves knew was a difficult terrain since 2020, after the dramatic 60-0 drubbing in last November and with the cascading series of revelations about scandals and financial scams that have marked their tenure, has mercifully spared the population the ignominy of handing them another 120-0 electoral wash-out at the forthcoming municipal elections. While this may leave the door ajar for erstwhile new faces and extra-parliamentary parties keen to make a mark at regional level, there is no doubt that the traditional 1st of May rallies, only organised by the Alliance du Changement in Rose-Hill this year-round, will lack its flavourful and folkloric mediatised political test of crowd rallies, where sound bytes predominate.

In the U.S., Labor Day has been held on the first Monday in September since the 1880s after the Haymarket Massacre in Chicago of US workers demanding an 8-hour workday. Repression of the labour movement swiftly followed, but the event would later be recognized as a critical moment in the US labour movement’s struggle for an eight-hour workday. In most of Europe and elsewhere, it was the Marxist International Socialist Congress which preferred May 1, an ancient festival halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice, as the CGT-led day of action in Paris on 1 May 1890 and had it declared a public holiday since 1968.

Trades unions have often complained, here perhaps more than elsewhere, that what should be a moment of rejoicing, gathering of the fraternity of workers and sober reflection on wider issues of common import, have been “hijacked” by political parties and their formidable machineries. It must be remembered that much like in France, while trades unions have an important role to play in the livelihoods and conditions of work of workers, often lobbying or pressing for changes and reforms, political parties offer the means by which political voices of workers are translated into legal reality.

Many initial LP stalwarts, including the likes of Hurryparsad Ramnarain, Maurice Curé, Pandit Sahadeo, to name but a few, were closely associated with militant or union causes which led to societal progress. So did the MMM, with its union offshoot, the General Workers Federation (GWF) in its early days. Both have contributed massively to the advancement of the downtrodden, of the destitute, of the economically vulnerable in sectors like public transport, port and docks and agriculture, and it is entirely fitting that history’s invisible hand has conjoined their forces to oust a regime that was certainly not born with that pedigree. Therefore, though in a non-electoral year the wishes of trades unions deserve attention, obviously the two major parties in power and their associates, will certainly feel the need to communicate a few days before the scheduled municipal elections.

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Increasing dependence on imported manpower

One of the many complex and sensitive issues that surfaces as we celebrate worker rights and responsibilities, is our increasing dependence on imported manpower in several key sectors of our economy, with the confederation of business operatives pressing last year for simultaneous increase in numbers and the fast-tracking of applicants. It is a matter of some concern that economic operators required some 45,000 of immigrant labour, or 12-15% of the economically active population, in a variety of sectors going from local bakeries, supermarkets, retail trades, transport, construction and textile.

Many of us would not have any morning bread without pliant and hard-working labour willing to give it a go at 4 or 5am in the bakeries and ‘boulangeries’. Construction and textile industries have constituted the traditional demand poles of immigrant labour, but many private clinics also rely on their contribution, while last year even the tourism and hospitality sectors were willing to forego our Mauritian hospitality for waiters and servers with a limited exposure to French.

Although, through the efforts of many unions and NGOs, much has been done to improve their lives and working conditions in “paradise island”, more needs to be done on that front. Systemic abuses of the processes and their monitoring requires the careful attention of the authorities: the permit system and the reported kick-backs to get files moving, the reporting of defaulters, employers or workers, who escape the regulated sector (some 10% of the immigrant workforce, as per Minister Reza Utteem’s recent answer in Parliament) or the number of fake marriages to prolong the stay of undesirables, those who undertake menial jobs without any permits, are all matters which require the attention of the authorities.

Foreign students need a mandatory repatriation insurance which can be effective to curtail those few that indulge in illegal activities whilst on our soil. In these sensitive matters, government can benefit from the assistance of the respective consulates or embassies to ensure that, as in the case of clear instructions to would-be migrants on the Malagasy website, the latter and their prospective local employers are fully informed.

At this juncture of our economic development, we also have to engage some deeper reflection on the root causes of some disaffection of our youths or working age population, for jobs that should normally be attractive, particularly in such economically vibrant sectors like hospitality.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 2 May 2025