“What has been frustrating for public opinion and sentiments is the slow, protracted pace of retribution, for the past regime’s excesses”

‘The electorate voted against it more than for anything. It now sees the impunity that seems to continue’

Interview: Nalini Burn, Economist & International Consultant

* ‘The thrust and tone of policies are firmly as pro-business as ever, since colonial days, except from the period between the 1930s and the 1960s’

* ‘The ruling elite seems closed generationally. But this fact intersects with other closures — inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic differences, disparities or cleavages — whether nepotist or not’

In this wide-ranging interview, economist and international consultant Nalini Burn offers a trenchant critique of the current political and economic climate. From the frustrations surrounding the slow pace of retribution for past excesses to the deeper, structural challenges of domesticating human rights within our constitutional framework, Nalini Burn argues that the nation remains trapped in a cycle of extractive models. She warns against the “technological optimism” currently driving policy at the expense of social and environmental justice and explores how the intersection of global economic interests and local political patronage is reshaping Mauritian society. As we face a complex era of geopolitical maneuvering and societal strain, Nalini Burn challenges us to look beyond the surface of electoral politics and confront the urgent need for a transformative, human-centered vision for the future. Read on:

Mauritius Times: Winning an election as a diverse coalition is one thing; governing together through complex legislative and budgetary pressures is quite another. Nearly 18 months after the Alliance du Changement’s victory, how do you assess the government’s cohesion and performance today?

Nalini Burn: Winning all seats with a party-wise diverse coalition can complicate and nuance matters. But the numerical composition counts. The Parti Travailliste negotiated 35 seats, won them all, as did the other candidates in the Alliance du Changement. With the concentration of powers in the Prime Minister, it had the commanding position, which it could reinforce. That much was evident before the elections to many, who, like me, had called for a change of regime. It was clear who would be more likely to drive the actual policy agenda and put its stamp on political culture and its outcomes.

The turbulent political dynamics were already set. Legislative pressures had diminished, as there was no opposition to challenge budgetary or policy dissension regarding ideology, conduct, or process. While budgetary pressures are often the ones to expose fault lines — as they have in the past — they did not do so along party lines, and there was no budgetary policy fallout in 2025. Such issues may still be weaponised, though they likely carry little sway over the electorate now.

It was also clear early on who would really set the agenda. The opportunities, and the risks of a 60-0 for state capture, from the outside were too high not to be seized upon and addressed. The few benefiting from the votes of the very many. We very early on heard from the apex of government that the previous regime had not worked enough with the private sector. Sure enough, it is the private sector hierarchies who have been publicly endorsed, their mergers and acquisitions — hallmarks of accumulation of wealth and concentration of market power — celebrated in public pomp. They are invited to shape policy, set the tone for development assistance — technical and financial.

Key economic policy advisers come from within the sector and are lodged at the apex of power. So, in terms of cohesion, the economy became firmly controlled by the ruling party within the coalition. The PM cumulates the mandate of minister of finance with the coupling of PMO and Ministry of Interior. It has other economic portfolios, including judicial oversight. There is no split in policy along party lines. The MMM to whom both the pain of economic austerity and pro-business elite labels had been pinned on in the past, has been supplanted.

The ground shaking measure to raise the Old Age Pension age threshold to 65, bringing in income targeting for only the lowest income individuals has happened with coalition partners’ formal acquiescence and endorsement.

It has also become clear that state patronage continues to be firmly in command, following a 10-year period away from dishing out the spoils of office. The political culture of patronage-clientelism has evidently not been part of transformative change. Also, the political space for re-imagining the economic arena has remained in the hands of private vested interests. In issues of land use conflicts, the fallacious opposition of environment and development is again peddled out, to allocate “development land” already well past its sustainable limits, from a social ecological standpoint. Now, any disquiet, frustrated contestation about the pace and direction of change is met with a blame of the previous regime and its “deep state” character embedded in all organisations, a seemingly unshakeable overhang. Parliamentary pronouncements are depressingly familiar in this regard. “Pas nou sa, akoz sa bann-la sa”

The turbulence that has resulted in the dislocation of the MMM can possibly be attributed to losing leverage over the private sector and a political class not wanting to lose the levers and privileges of power in the dominant patronage politics model.

So, cohesion is a complex, messy matter, so far achieved by the fracturing of a coalition member.

* When you put your ear to the ground, what do you hear? Is there a growing public satisfaction or dissatisfaction regarding the overall pace, decisiveness, and focus of the government’s actions?

Your metaphor is interesting. What is the ground and how to employ an ear? Is it through media, social media, listening to people in face-to-face situations, through engaging with policy and legislation, in multi-stakeholder mechanisms? That there is disappointment and dissatisfaction is very palpable. The sheer difficulty of making ends meet for many families of very different income levels is a pain that resonates around the globe. It is the fallout of wars and the limits of extractive economic models, combined with political models favouring private market services over public good, that have become even more triumphant.

The pace: Pace cannot be singled out in itself. It is more about the pace to do what and how. The slow pace of making appointments, without changing the method of selection, and rewarding old loyalties on top of that, privileging the old hands, vying with each other for office.

What has been frustrating for public opinion and sentiments is the slow, protracted pace of retribution, for the past regime’s excesses. The electorate voted against it more than for anything. It now sees the impunity that seems to continue — money laundering, corruption, drug trafficking, and other forms of unexplained wealth and displaced public resources. These are seen as the drivers of the current erosion of living standards.

The frustration is giving way to amused and not so amused cynicism about the serial jaded theatre of hauling under warning over financial crime, punctuated by clinical time outs, legal procedural wranglings of our judicial system, the opaque workings of a slow bureaucracy. This agenda is not finished. The perception is of lobbies and forces behind the scenes at work. Public pressure and broad dissatisfaction may not necessarily have much traction before mid-term of an electoral cycle. Yet, public trust in institutions and the plethora of organisations is rapidly eroding, as there are disturbing signs of these same processes working in the current regime’s interest.

Decisiveness. My reply to your earlier question indicates that there is actual decisiveness. There are clear agendas at work from powerful national and bilateral players over economic interests. But they are not necessarily seen as decisiveness as such, nor what decisiveness should be about. Indeed, most of what has impacted on daily life and sentiments is externally-driven — geopolitics, wars, US policy reversals, regional security implications. Decisiveness over governmental programme priorities is not quite felt. Some voices are loud to decry the decisiveness over policies, such as raising the old age pension age — which were never part of the electoral pact.

Focus. The overriding focus seems to be the economy as conventionally conceived and applied by the economic elites in command — not so much the social and environmental crises. The economy is not re-imagined – as inextricably linked to the social and environmental, as part of transformative Changement. I say this in spite of the public and private pronouncements and measures over the circular economy and means of accessing climate finance. Without clear, robust safeguards all manners of green, white, blue washing can take place.

* While keeping major electoral pledges like constitutional reform is commendable, the urgent concerns of Mauritian families centre around the soaring cost of living and a perceived breakdown in law and order—particularly with synthetic drugs infiltrating every corner of the island, fuelling addiction and violent crime. Do the authorities have concrete answers to these disturbing trends?

The policy priorities in the government programme menu are many. They have not been really assessed for coherence and relevance, sequenced and prioritised. It has not had much time to mature and be tested. As already said, it is not what tipped the scale in the previous election, which saw an overwhelming rejection of the previous regime. You are right about what you wanted me to say about ear to the ground over cost of living and drugs, breakdown of law and order.

To me, a government has to work at many levels, across many areas coherently, driven by purpose over outcome, transparently, and above all, with robust accountability. I see Constitutional reform as a priority. It engages different institutions and a variety of actors and stakeholders, not necessarily competing in time and effort, but complementing each other judiciously.

What was notably absent from the 1968 Constitution was the explicit domestication of Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. Had we established a solid constitutional framework alongside comprehensive political education on human rights, the temptation to infringe upon these fundamental rights — including access to the means of existence, food, housing, water, and energy — would not be so readily indulged. Furthermore, there is no ‘alternative’ budgetary vision. In my view, the Changement should have carved out a pathway toward decolonizing, transformative change. It should have been guided by minimum obligations — such as ‘leaving no one behind’ and ‘putting the last first’ — as core budgetary principles, even when macro-stabilisation remains the priority. Search the Constitution for ‘equality’ or even ‘equity,’ and you will not find it.

There is a big section on constitutionalising private property rights, which has engendered much litigation over the centuries. There is no corresponding provision for public litigation in upholding the common good, for holding to account. The lobbying and well-honed communication that shaped the narrative, set boundaries at the time also came from private economic interests about to lose further their direct hegemonic control over the polity, after independence.

Constitutional reform would not only set the normative “justiciable” standards for policy and its implementation. It would also focus on ending proscribed forms of substantive discrimination — on grounds of race, ethnicity, faith, and residence, which is part of the reason for the Constitutional reform agenda about political representation and other arenas of threat to national cohesion.

Our Constitution was written by British civil servants in the Cold War, while the illegal excision of the Chagos Archipelago was already well under way, for a military base to protect Western economic interests and maintain political leverage.  We still face the same situation, with Mauritius island now also going back to the days of being a naval base and a trading, financial hub (to live, prosper, work and play) as in its French colonising heyday. Current rival geopolitical interests continue to covet the fixed strategic locations of our Indian Ocean island confetti.

The latest option of the USA buying out the Chagos Islands made the headlines on 8th June 2026, World Ocean Day. The year’s theme ironically celebrates Marine Protection Parks, while during the same week, our government announces that our national police force is being overseen by the US Army. Is this big power militarisation how we will curb the addiction and violent crime you mention, address a perceived breakdown of law and order, build a national public security force fit for purpose? Many have posed questions about the budgetary shortfall when the UK-Republic of Mauritius Treaty was put on the back burner, following political opposition from the USA. Will military real estate transactions be best served by long lease or outright asset sale?

* Every national budget carries weight, but a tremendous amount of anticipation surrounds the upcoming Budget 2026–2027, to be presented on June 19. Does this specific budget hold unique symbolic and practical importance for both the government and the public?

The 2025-26 budget also had tremendous anticipation fuelled by populist electoral promises, including about the regressive burden of indirect taxes on consumption. The actual budget policy outcome was to scale back addressing resource mobilisation through direct taxation of the wealthy and reducing their fiscal incentives, which fuels further economic dislocation. It was antagonising, swiftly eroding the credentials of a public-oriented government.

One member of the public in my locality said to me: the government just has to reduce VAT by 5%. That would be his cost-free magic wand — powerful symbol with material results. So yes, such is the desperation at the tail end of a model which has been prioritising a high-income economy, fuelled by private consumption of imports and private debt, over several decades since our economic miracle, and by successive governments.

* The Ministry of Finance emphasizes that this budget must enforce fiscal discipline and curb public debt. Concurrently, the government faces immense pressure to protect household purchasing power and expand social safety nets. Can the budget realistically achieve both fiscal consolidation and major social relief, or will one have to give way?

It will probably continue in the same vein, having conflated “unsustainable” fiscal spending with social relief, as you put it. Some keep bringing up how the structural adjustment measures of the 1980s were IMF-supported not IMF-dictated — namely over free-at-point of provision educational policy. But we still, conveniently for business interests and for an insulated bureaucracy and political elite, set the trade-off as between the social and the economic.

There are other ways to reduce the Consolidated Fund as a proportion of the general budget and/or Gross Domestic Product, if the actual metric is all that matters and not the qualitative content of ideologically slanted policy prescriptions. I have already touched on internal resource mobilisation.

Let us factor in the gains to be made from increasing economy and efficiency, from reducing inequalities and perceived injustices, and from using the efficiency gains for socially desirable and just outcomes. The yawning gap in capacity in project and programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation recurs depressingly in assessments, including for accessing climate finance. It is wasted money. The patent unwillingness to touch the relatively generous perks and privileges of office — remuneration, per diems, and pensions — is another unacceptable marker of self-serving office in our patron-client ecosystem. The apologies offered, or the audible silence that persists, alongside the implosion of an entire party, continue to rankle the public.

* The ruling alliance spans a wide ideological spectrum, housing both pro-business factions and strongly worker-oriented groups. As the government works out its major economic policies, do you see it able to successfully balance corporate interests with socialist and union-backed demands?

No, I fail to see where the socialist and union-backed worker policies are coming from. Not least from a transformative human rights-based social development and social protection policy. The thrust and tone of policies are firmly as pro-business as ever, since colonial days, except from the period between the 1930s and the 1960s.

* Annual Director of Audit reports consistently expose widespread waste, systemic delays, and inefficiencies across various ministries and state-owned enterprises. If the next budget injects billions more into infrastructure projects without introducing fundamental governance reforms, are we simply throwing good public money after bad?

A critical weakness is fracturing the investment and current budget. If investment projects are seen as generating a stream of services and benefits over time, then waste, misallocation cannot be pinned only on the investment budget. It has to scrutinise and call to account service delivery, budget execution in financial, material and outcome terms.

To its credit the National Audit Office is venturing into performance audits. But the Programme-Based Performance-based Budgeting Reform ended with the 2014 elections. It has been revived as an empty shell only by the current government. Without solid continual results-oriented investment in capacity and performance management that is geared to the public good, to compliance to human rights, it is window-dressing. Without solid impunity, public accountability mechanisms, it is a dead letter. More than legislative reform, it is regulatory reform that needs re-imagining root and branch. We pay lip service in global conferences to approaches that can’t really be applied. NGOs are not very popular with either public servants or business groups when they try to call to account.

* The landslide victory of the Alliance du Changement left the parliamentary opposition drastically weakened. In an environment where the traditional checks and balances within the National Assembly are so limited, how can the government ensure robust institutional accountability and transparency?

It is clear that the government does not view self-discipline as part of its mission. Consequently, the burden of protecting fundamental rights falls upon the public, civil society, and public-spirited unions and professional associations—provided, of course, that they are not stifled, marginalized, or co-opted.

* Controversies under the previous administration — such as mandatory SIM card re-registration, the “Moustass Leaks” wiretapping scandal, and the temporary blocking of social media — raised severe alarms over civil liberties. How is the current administration reforming national security and cybersecurity frameworks to safeguard citizens’ privacy and prevent political surveillance?

I can see the mechanisms of surveillance and control being re-engineered, when in power. My response regarding the US army and the police shows my alarm. We are takers in the ways in which violent authoritarianisms, particularly in their surveillance and control roles, are being normalised. The use of AI in these arenas with the tech oligarchs in control with global ideological agendas – from libertarian to toxic masculinist and white supremacist politics, linking faith and politics — is being embedded and made viral within and across platforms. The forms of control are more insidious and pernicious. I am not sure that nationally this is being tracked, as  the government continues to embrace technological optimism as an economic opportunity only.

* On paper, Mauritius boasts vibrant political engagement, high voter turnout, and deeply rooted democratic traditions. Yet, the ruling elite remains remarkably closed, creating a push factor for highly educated young professionals who see no clear path to impact within the traditional structures. Why is does the political ecosystem struggles to foster a new generation of leaders—and why smaller parties find it nearly impossible to break through?

The thrust of my answers shows my sense that what is on the surface is vibrant electoral engineering. But its underbelly is the patron-client electoral compacts. Perhaps we need to look beyond spatial constituencies, which can be gerrymandered to generate stable electoral majorities, as has been claimed regarding electoral boundaries leading to independence.

The ruling elite seems closed generationally. But this fact intersects with other closures — inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic differences, disparities or cleavages — whether nepotist or not. Highly educated young professionals hit a glass wall when it comes to the nepotism in the private sector, stable over centuries, the most intractable being over the ownership and control of land and related sources of private wealth. And this by the way, is the spatial terrain where political elites and economic elites cohabit.

The question to pose is how to loosen the grip of the patron-client political economic culture, how to break down the grip of speaking out loud, go against the grain of policy and incumbent power. The internalised politics of intimidation, for fear of losing jobs, contracts, networks have been formidably effective in deterring contesting politics and policy. They cut across the public and private sectors. Yet in other countries, small parties are breaking the mould everywhere. Sadly, they mostly are from the right-wing extremists on the ascendancy.

As we approach the 2030s, we cannot yet see the political pathways carved out of the economic depression of the 1930s and the corroding societal harm — and what we know as post-traumatic syndromes.

* Every week brings its share of violent crime, with some incidents resulting in death or leaving victims with severe, life-altering physical and mental trauma. In many instances, these tragedies involve close relatives or petty criminals, most of the latter driven by a history of synthetic drug addiction. Concurrently, the Financial Crimes Commission’s (FCC) investigations are revealing a different, equally troubling facet of our society: an increasing number of money laundering cases that implicate what we would otherwise consider ordinary citizens. What does all of this reveal about the current state of our society and its people?

Perhaps the way you frame it seems to reflect media panics and myths. We must not take this as a reality check. There has been a dearth — conscious neglect — in my view of policy-oriented research about social trends. Our country was forged in coercion, life-denying, soul-destroying physical and mental trauma.

Has this violence ever truly left us, or has it simply become more visible, more searing, and more unbearable? We have reached the extensive and intensive limits of a model that commodifies everything for human benefit — treating medical, educational, and personal services, alongside private transport and consumer goods, as mere transactions. The declining health of humanity is inextricably linked to the degradation of non-human beings and our shared environment. It is an indivisible loop, and it requires a ‘One Health’ perspective — one that finally moves beyond the false binaries of mental and physical well-being.

This is the real “cocovid” situation made notorious, stigmatised in pandemic confinement days. The precarity of our material lives and our well-being may come from the suppressed realisation that we may be surplus to requirements, with little return to human capital or societal reproduction. The owners of wealth no longer need such vast reservoirs of labour, with mechanisation and digitisation.

Yes, the laisser-faire business facilitation has extended to the global drug trafficking industry -with our rising standard of living- like in the Seychelles, making us a target as a destination, not a transit country. The drug economy has been domesticated nationally and locally. It permeates all localities and groups, institutions and organisations. Lax institutions and nimble legal activism have facilitated easy pickings. The cheapening of the supply and technology of synthetic production and distribution reaching the poorer market segments, of the NEET, specially, those Not in Education, Employment and Training, as cocaine reaches much higher end segments. Just as real estate “development” portfolio has become the driving segment of the economic segments of leading conglomerates. The rate of return crowds out other segments, such is the global asset wealth to be attracted by our landscapes and seascapes, our ecologically sensitive ecosystems straddling public and private land. This is the latest political pronouncement we have heard regarding development must prevail over environment.

Yet we have co-created a unique social ecology, even when we were enlisted in destroying nature and neglecting society, its multiple layers of injustices in the name of development. So much so that our human fertility is below replacement level, as feminicides seem to increase in number, virulence… We are not unique in this. Yet, there is so much resilience, humour, healthy contempt of injustice, capacity of indignation in the face of violations of dignity and self-esteem. It is manifest even in social media. In the will to fight back, to live, not just survive, how can we thrive on that, re-imagine a less destructive, self-destructive future, that sucks the life, sanity and humanity out of us?

When you mention new parties of the new generation, I do not see any that have really taken stock, that strive, capture the imagination, craft, mobilise, energise transformation. I see promising, flickering glimmers, in people, in their music and art, ways of being part of nature, nurturing society. It will take a cultural revolution, a sobering reality check, a slow long fuse to ignite.

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Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 12 June 2026

Tags:Accountability, Alliance du Changement, Austerity, Civil Society, Constitutional Reform, Corruption, Development, Environment, Extractive Economy, Geopolitics, governance, Human Rights, Inequality, Institutional Erosion, Interview Nalini Burn, Mauritius Times, Neoliberalism, One Health, Patronage, Patronage-Clientelism, Public Good, Real-Estate, Social Justice, Surveillance, Synthetic Drugs, Transformation, Transparency