Why Electing Bizlall is Voters' Next Logical Step

To understand this we have to recall how they arrive at their decisions. In its most basic form that depends on two things: one is the information they have and the other is their ability to process that info. For sure they make very complex decisions. Which makes electoral data absolutely fascinating.

The First 60-0 Was The 

Optimal Decision, in 1982

It was the optimal for voters to keep every candidates of the outgoing Labour government -- which many consider as the best we ever had -- out of Parliament given the paucity of information that was available then and their sophistication level. Still if you dig a little bit you find out that there was some kind of order in the way they voted. This is apparent when we see who among the unreturned candidates grabbed the highest percentages of votes in their respective riding. As Table 2 shows SR got the highest, followed by SB and Duval. KJ who implemented free education after he came up with the idea was sixth. This table may be familiar to you. It is the same one we used to propose that best loser seats should have been allocated to these people as they had the highest ratings among voters -- Nicol Francois, a candidate from Rodrigues, actually came in right after Duval but doesn't appear here as our proposal wouldn't have granted him an additional seat to reflect the relative sizes of the voting pools of the two island. So what we can note here is that voters seemed to have said "Ok, we're booting all of the guys out but we have decided not to treat everyone of you the same way."

So Was The Second One in 1995

Fast forward 13 years and we get our second 60-0. Again if we look at Table 4 -- taken from a previous article which is why it's not table 2 :) -- we see that AJ was the best among the losers, GD was second, AB fourth and RS sixth. Actually Nancy from riding 21 came right after Von Mally but for similar reasons as Francois above is excluded from our people list.

Voters Got More Sophisticated in Between

My first reaction when I saw the 1991 results was that voters might have looked back at 1982 and thought they made a mistake and therefore decided this time that they needed to send a good enough opposition to parliament so they picked Navin, Arvin and Vasant. Some learning seems to have been going on here since 1982. People got more educated. Standards of living increased and a bit more information had become available. And they collectively understood how the FPTP system works. But for some reason they didn't want to do the same thing in 1995. 

Keeping a Few in 2000

A very interesting election again. This time it happens after Ramgoolam's first mandate as PM. Pretty mediocre and too little happening over five years. Mauritius in slo-mo mode. It could have been a 60-0 but it's not. Navin tops his riding while Arvin is second in No. 11 and go back into parliament. Along with four other MPs. And they do quite a good job in the opposition. By the way this is an important piece of information for quieting the electrical clock of our Rolls Royce of constitution.

An Incompetent Berenger is Booted Out

Big help from mainstream media was not enough to hide the fact that Berenger had been a lousy PM. PB was also unable to prevent 11,000 people from falling into poverty. This didn't help. Neither did selling 40% of MT to FT -- at the time one of the most indebted companies in the world. Ramgoolam is back in one of the most beautiful electoral results: the first time one of the three big parties beat an alliance of the other two. 

Sithanen Screws Up The Economy Big Time

RS taxes interest income, kills our high savings rate, demolishes thousands of financial plans which took years to build, cancels the school-feeding program and implements other mindless targeting, disconnect pump prices from their international levels (see chart below), flattens the tax structure and depreciates our rupee. He seems to be building a facade of low-tax jurisdiction. That's enough to throw 22,000 into poverty, create a GDP gap of over Rs90bn with respect to his targets -- that's about Rs20bn of revenue for our government -- and deny him a ticket in May 2010.

December 2014 is A Beauty

Ramgoolam, Berenger and Sithanen try to turn Mauritius into a banana republic and even predict the third 60-0. Voters using our magnificent FPTP system decide otherwise: they elect only 13 candidates from Ramgoolam's alliance, boot him out of the PMO and of Parliament. Along with Boolell and Sithanen. The very interesting thing about this election is that voters saw through the wicked plan of the scheming trio. They said no the dumb and dangerous electoral reform of Sithanen. No to his regressive policies. No to nasyon zugader of three casinos in every town and village. That was not too difficult to do when official figures tell us that more than twenty thousand more people had been thrown into poverty by the end of 2012. And a GDP shortfall of almost Rs275bn. Plus a horrific inequality. See following three charts.

But they also said yes to our FPTP system. Yes to our excellent constitution that had provided us with stable governments over the past 45 years via the Westminsterian system. And yes to more progressive policies.

Basically this result is worse than the two 60-0. Because we know that in each one of them -- 1982 and 1995 -- the candidate who got the best result among those who lost was the outgoing PM. Not this time. This also puts an end to Ramgoolam's streak of topping his riding in No. 5 five times. Ditto for Boolell who's been elected in No. 11 for six times. The voters seemed to have decided that what these people were trying to do was so dangerous that they couldn't even take the risk of electing them. The opted for the Boygahs. Vox populi, vox dei.

Where Does That Leave Us For December 17?

If voters were capable of rejecting the LP-MMM alliance in 2014 it will not be a big surprise for those of Belle-Rose/Quatre-Bornes to return Jack Bizlall to Parliament -- he scored no less than 11.5% in the last general election. They will understand that the LP, MMM and the PMSD are parties that have contributed to making us a lesser country since 2005. And that too in many ways. They will understand that we need a lot more discussion in Parliament. Definitely more dissent. Collendavelloo, an ex-MMM, is trying to sink Mauritius further by privatising CWA. Voters will realise that the plan to turn Mauritius into a banana republic is still a top priority for Berenger, Ramgoolam and Sithanen. We need someone to challenge this kind of rubbish in the National Assembly while the extra-Parliamentary pushback intensifies. We also desperately need to get value for the money we pay our MPs. We know that person is not Arvin. We know that person is not Nita Juddoo. 

That person is Jack Bizlall.