Thursday, December 06, 2018

PM Presses Ahead With Own Version of Banana Republic

The bill on electoral reform in the National Assembly (NA) is effectively as dangerous and crappy as the one we massively rejected in December 2014. It doesn't solve anything and shrinks our democracy. Given that we don't have recall elections and statute referendums yet it is important that enough MPs abstain and vote against the introduction of proportional representation (PR). It is even better that a few MPs resign from parliament to send another clear signal that we will not allow Lepep to break yet another of its pledges and put MPs at the centre of a conflict of interest. Let's focus on the parts of this bill that are most dangerous and deal with three misconceptions.

Proposal Puts MPs 
in Conflict of Interest
A dose of PR and best loser seats combined with our first-past-the-post (FPTP) system – which will create two forms of double-candidacies – will make it a lot more difficult for us to keep politicians out of our NA and this is the main reason the bill has been introduced as we know that our current BLS is not subsumable. This is totally unacceptable and incompatible with our political traditions. See all of our five post-independence PMs have lost their seat at one point or another with three losing it as incumbent. Such a massive change in our electoral traditions requires validation by voters in a referendum.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Not a Lot of Business Done

Since the moronic World Bank's Doing Business rankings were put on a pedestal by a couple of bean-counters and our taxation structure flattened starting in 2006. See the promised 8% growth over the last 13 years should have produced a little over six trillion rupees of national output. But as chart 1 shows Mauritius generated only about four and half trillion rupees of GDP. The difference – the Sithanen toohrooh – should cross the trillion-and-a-half-rupee mark by the time you play a famous U2 song a couple of minutes after 23h58 on the last day of 2018. Breaking down this shortfall yields important political insights.

Saturday, October 06, 2018

Thoughts on Electoral Reform (7)

I came to very clearly believe that 
a form of PR would be harmful to Canada.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada,
Feb 1, 2018 on why he's sticking with FPTP

You can have any colour 
as long as it is black.
Henry Ford, about the Model T, 1909


Pravind Al Lapes Rekin 
Ek Enn Lapipi Danzere
It's clear to everyone who doesn't want to get distracted by its wrapping – the jargon, the apparent concern for increased female representation and other gimmicks – that the electoral reform the PM presented on behalf of the Lepep government about ten days ago will turn our country into an autocracy with leaders appointing MPs, suppress dissent which is the lifeblood of democracies and make it a lot more difficult for voters to keep politicians out of our National Assembly (NA).

See we collectively decided in 2014 not to elect many politicians for reasons that included proportional representation (PR), second republic and having the guy who killed our savings culture, broke the economy and start something which has caused an economic shortfall which is now measured in years of national output missing as Finance Minister again. That's a big weapon we have as voters and which we've used before against two other outgoing PMs. Not only we shouldn't let anyone take it away from us but it is necessary that we make it even more potent as we show below.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Chamboulons notre système électoral: A note

A few comments about this article which appeared yesterday.

1. We have an excellent electoral system called the FPTP while the Sachs Commission's alphabet soup of electoral options are all PR-based. Which makes that part of the report quite narrow. It's not the fault of the Commission. They were given terms of reference that were not broad enough. Which is a pity. Never mind there are tweaks that can be made to our FPTP setup without changing its essence. I have proposed such a disinterested tweak in July 2014 and have kept improving it in a series of papers. These and the backgrounders are available here. I must confess that initially I didn't understand why the Labour Party of Seewoosagur (who turned 118 yesterday), Kher and Renga were dead against PR. I understand now. It's hard not to have even more respect for them and others who fought against PR when you go deep into the FPTP system and find out how extraordinary it is.

2. The simulations in the article are not realistic because they don't take into account that in three of the four elections with the most lopsided results – which is why we want to improve the FPTP system in the first place – the alliance collapsed before 21 months. These might have an effect on the stability of government in a PR system which is way too dramatic. Furthermore nothing says that the percentage of votes received in an FPTP setup would be the same that would prevail in an PR environment. There are several cases where PR has prevented the formation of government for several months. We don't want that to happen here.

Saturday, September 01, 2018

Freymwurk Pu Analiz Dekolonizasyon

Kifer Gandhi pankor mor?
Sel reaksyon Winston Churchill, selon Shashi Tharoor, se sa not la dan fayl
bann memo kot ofisyel Angle ti pe dir li ki dimunn pe mor lor sime dan Bengal  

Enn Ti Kestyon
Si mo dimann zot ki pei tiena pli gro lekonomi pandan plis letan dernye 2,000 banane ki zot pu reponn? Langleter? Lamerik? Lafrans? Lespayn? Non. Len. Len tiena pli gro lekonomi pandan 85% sa letan la. Sa ve dir 1,700 banane. Sirpri? Pa tiapran lekol? Pa konvinki? Be pran enn minit sink segon pu get sa zoli ti video ki The Economist ti fer an 2014 la. Li korobor seki Shashi Tharoor ti dir dan emisyon Q&A TV Ostralyen ABC Septam lane dernyer. Kav usi get enn rapor ADB pu gayn enn lot pies pezel. Len se enn ka interesan pu konpran konpleksite linpak kolonizasyon lor enn pei.

Avan Ek Apre Bann Angle
Bann Angle finn kontrol Len u enn bon parti sa pei la pandan 200 banane par la. Tharoor inn dir ki Len an 1800 – lor enn baz PPP ('Purchasing Power Parity') – ti reprezant 23% lekonomi mondyal. Ler Angle kit Len finalman an 1947 sa par la ti degringole a 3%. Sa ve dir lor 150 banane par Len finn bese par plis ki set fwa. Sa donn nu enn lide ki Angle finn fer letan zot ti laba. Pa zis sa. Apar 0.5-2 milyon dimunn ki ti mor dan partisyon an 1947 – selon Wikipedia ek liv Collins ek Lapierre (Freedom at Midnight) – 10 milyon dimunn ti perdi lavi dan gran lafaminn Bengal 1770. Un byen tande. 10 milyon. Fode guete rol ki bann Angle finn zwe pu sa olokos la arive ek ki zot finn fer kan revini konpayni de Ind – ki wadire ti gayn enn kontra afermaz – finn bese. Pa fini 5.5 milyon dimunn ti mor dan enn lot gran lafaminn ant 1876 ek 1878. Plis pandan dezyem guer mondyal 2-3 milyon indyin (4.3 milyon selon Tharoor) ti mor dan enn lot lafaminn dan Bengal. Donk total dimunn kinn mor pu sa kat evenman la se environ 20 milyon. Sa uver nu lizye pu konpran nu prop kolonizasyon ek dekolonizasyon pli byen. Sa ed nu elabor enn lalis variab inportan dan tiart 1 ki osi tenir kont nu bann spesifisite istorik ek aktyel.

Monday, July 16, 2018

PM Sounds Death Knell for URA

By announcing that the price of water will not go up. See the Utility Regulatory Authority was set up on the basis of a rather sloppy justification to fix the price of stuff like water and electricity. Now if the PM decides that there won't be any increases it immediately makes that institution redundant. Why spend so much money on a new institution when the work can be done elsewhere like at the Ministry of Finance? It also cuts the energy minister who heads the tiniest of political parties to size and is another splendid reason for him to tender his resignation.

But the head of government did more. He also reduced the price of petroleum products which overrode the recent work of the Petroleum Pricing Committee. This makes the case for the prices of these basic building blocks of GDP to be determined at all times by Cabinet. Electricity prices too should have come down to give a fillip to the economy but they did not because of two reasons. One is that government has been kidding itself for too long that tax mix doesn't matter. Taxing inputs to death to build a very risky facade of a low-tax jurisdiction instead of bringing back top income and corporate taxes to more sustainable levels of 30% has generated a catastrophic growth path. Indeed there was an equivalent of five years of national output missing – those between 2005 and 2009 – at the end of last year because of the trickle-down economics which started in 2006 on the watch of Navin Ramgoolam, an avowed socialist.

Friday, June 08, 2018

Why You Forgot 2018 is The Year of The 'Second Economic Miracle'

... je pense que vers 2008 nous pouvons réaliser un taux de croissance de 7/8%.
Rama Sithanen, 2005

54. In this context, some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. 

Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation 2013 


No Miracle in Sight
Half of the fourth year of the Lepep government is almost gone and still no trace of the exceptional economic performance SAJ had promised for 2018. Only growth rates of less than 4% so far and the next two years are not likely to be any different. These are the lowest in decades. 

We also know we're not in the middle of an economic miracle when we check what happened to our currency – a huge wealth-lever – since December 2014. Plus there have been talks of postponing the age citizens are eligible for the basic retirement pension (BRP) by five whole years. That's not the kind of stuff you'd expect if things were going well. So why hasn't Lepep been able to produce a reasonable performance let alone a great one? Essentially because it didn't fix a broken economy and got so many policy decisions wrong. 

Tuesday, May 22, 2018

Thoughts on Electoral Reform (6)

A political rape of democracy
SSR on the Banwell Report, 1966

Enn komeraz sa
SAJ on PR, Rodrigues, 2015 

We know that our excellent First Past The Post (FPTP) system generates results that are sometimes too lopsided. But electoral reform cannot ignore fundamental facts. We've looked at a number of them in the first five parts of this series of articles (these have appeared in the Forum section between April 8, 2014 and December 22, 2016). We'll consider a couple more here, revisit a few and offer some fresh insights on three electoral proposals. But first let us have a look at a useful decomposition of the FPTP system.

Breaking the FPTP in Two Parts
It helps to view our FPTP system as a sum of a PR system and a majority prize. It's the majority prize that has provided us with a clear winner in ten out of eleven elections and that too as soon as we had finished counting the votes.


It's again thanks to this prize that we've had stable government after stable government even after the departure of one or more partners. This has saved us from the trouble and the cost of going to the polls a certain number of times. As any attempt to correct some of the imbalances of the FPTP system involves making the prize smaller we need to tread carefully so that we don't compromise the many essential benefits that it provides us.

Tuesday, May 08, 2018

32% of World Bank Policy Reports Never Downloaded

"... I am not an engineer, I am not a technician and everything that I have done in my life is only law. So, I need expert advice and I am going to put experts and not politicians at the Head of the CEB and the CWA. I am not going to do appel international and all that."

Ivan Collendavelloo, in Parliament, March 2015

"... Nun fini konpran ki nu bizin lasistans de la bank mondyal pu ki nu kapav fer bann bon developman dan sekter delo."

Ivan Collendavelloo, Feb 2016

The World Has No Time
For This Kind Of Nonsense
So reported The Economist at the end of last May. It referred to a study by the World Bank on the popularity of its policy reports. As almost half of them are supposed to at least improve public debate the two authors of the report – Doerte Doemeland and James Trevino – looked at how many times 1,611 of these policy documents were downloaded. Turns out that almost a third was never downloaded. I am not surprised. I got to read a few them over the years and I must say there's a lot of rubbish in there. So I perfectly understand that no one is bothering about so many of these reports. Who has time for crap in this fast-moving, intelligent and hyper-connected world?

Maybe The World Is Wrong?
And that many of her problems would go away if more people read those reports and implemented the recommendations spelled out in there. After downloading them that is. Because after all the World Bank's mission is to end poverty. Maybe that's what Mauritius needs to do to get out of the middle-income trap where we've been stuck for 27 years? And start breathing down Singapore's neck.

Sunday, April 15, 2018

Recall Elections Are Key To Better Political Outcomes

A recall election is a constitutional tool to eject an MP from Parliament anytime between general elections if enough of the voters in her constituency sign a petition to that effect. A by-election is then organised. Given the performance and the behaviour of some of the MPs that we've been sending to Parliament over the past 15-20 years we voters clearly need a way to make them work in our national interest throughout a whole term and not just a little bit at the start and another little bit at the end. Recall elections do precisely that.

Had we had this system in place since 2005 we would have been an entirely different country by keeping elected politicians on their toes. In at least four situations. The first one is in February 2007 when Sithanen took the country hostage because he wanted to second-guess the prerogative of the PM with respect to the appointment of the Governor of the Bank of Mauritius. He then went on to cause extensive damage to our economy for three whole years. With a recall election he might have been out in a few months. A by-election in those days would have cost around Rs20-25 million. A trifle really compared to what he has set in motion: a trillion-rupee Toohrooh. 

The second situation is Soodhun stating that he would have shot XLD in Parliament if his bodyguard had given him his revolver. While it's true he lost his ministerial portfolio I don't think the process is speedy enough as he is still an MP. Voters should have had the option of recalling his seat. Recall elections would have also been quite handy when the Minister deproclaimed a public beach.

The third situation is the transfer of the post of PM from SAJ to his son. Our constitution doesn't look to have been designed to have two people have the same majority of MPs behind them. See SAJ was leader of the Lepep alliance in December 2014 and presented as PM in that general election – although he was not the leader of the party with the most candidates in that alliance. If he steps down in favour of Pravind, who is deemed to have the support of that majority of MPs if he stays in Parliament? He or his son? There was no such ambiguity when he resigned from Parliament back in October 2003 to allow Berenger to get the top job.

Friday, January 05, 2018

Elekter Kontinye Redesin Terin Politik

An desam 2014 elekter ti konpran ki Ramgoolam, Berenger ek Sithanen ti pe rod fer nu pei vinn enn repiblik bananyer. Alor zot finn fer Ramgoolam perdi puvwar ek so siez, finn gard Sithanen an deor parlman pu omwin sink an ankor ek mank tigit Berenger usi ti pwal dan karo kann. Ek la dernye eleksyon parsyel finn montre nu kuma li top kan nu vot zis pu enn kandida par sirkonskripsyon -- single member constituencies (SMC) an angle: bann parti politik met bon kandida, kalite deba buku pli bon ek pa tann bann betiz kuma 'vot blok' uswa 'si zot ule minis zot bizin vot 3-0'. Mazinn enn kut dan ki kalite bon latmosfer nu bann eleksyon zeneral ti pu derule si nu ti vot pu enn sel kandida dan sak sirkonskripsyon. Anfet li ti kumsa an 1959 ek 1963. Nu tiena karant SMC. Li pa etonan ki sa finn fer nu gayn bann bon depite ek apre bann bon minis kinn fer nu pei mari avanse. Li ti pu bon pu Moris si nu ti return ek 40 SMC.

Nu bizin osi apresye ki internet pe zwe enn rol de pli an pli inportan dan bann eleksyons. Nunn gayn buku deba ant bann kandida lor diferan platform ek sa bann deba la aksesib ninport kan. Anu pa bliye tu sa bann deba ki derule ant sitwayin san ki media met so nene ladan. Tusala finn permet nu konn ek konpran pozisyon bann kandida pli byen. Anu get bann rezilta aster.

4 Elekter Lor 5 
Pann Vot Pu Arvin
Malgre ki Boolell finn eli par enn lavans plis ki 4,700 vot se promye fwa ki nu piavoy enn depite dan parlman ek enn sipor elektoral osi feb (19%). Ansyen rekor ti pu Essoof depi 1992 (30%). Pravind li ti rant dan parlman an 2009 ek de fwa plis sipor (40%) -- de elekter lor sink ti vot li. Anfet Arvin so sipor telma feb ki istorikman ena set kandida dan bann eleksyon parsyel kinn gayn enn pli bon sipor ki li malgre ki zot pa finn eli. Petet zot rapel ki an 1989 Collendavelloo ti gayn 40% sipor (47.6% vot konbine ek enn turnout 83%) ler li ti reprezant li apre so demisyon depi dan parlman akoz enn siniatir.