Tuesday, October 29, 2024

Ramgoolam Statements That Don't Survive A Fact-Check

1. Your shopping trolley was full when I was PM (2023 onwards). Depends for whom. Let's see what the data shows.

2. When we were in power we didn't allow pump prices to go as high as they did on world markets (2024). The APM indeed reduced the volatility in oil prices. But let's see what happened when they crashed during the Great Recession.

3. When SSR gave free (secondary) education (at least a million times since 2005). While SSR was the PM who made this announcement during the campaign for the general election of 1976, it was Kher Jagatsingh who suggested its insertion in the electoral manifesto and implemented it. KJ, a hardworker, had this to say about his stint at the Ministry of Education.


4. Every new born baby has Rs420,000 of debt on her head (2024). True but he's been saying that to imply that the current MSM government is ruining the country but he's not saying how much the debt has progressed on his watch as PM. Here's what we found for central government debt which is lower than total public debt number used above.

5. I made a mistake of helping Pravind Jugnauth get elected in riding No.8 (2024). That's true but he had little choice because Sithanen had messed up so badly that had he not done that he might have be booted out of power in 2010. And before making it easier for PJ to return to parliament he also gave a second presidential term to SAJ, PJ's father.

6. We got into this alliance (with the MMM, ReA and ND) because we want to save the country (2024). Nope. He did that because he was unable to get elected in the last two general elections even though he changed ridings in GE2019. And he's 77 while Paul Bérenger is 79. Subron has been trying to get into parliament for 41 years.

7. Our team is a mixture of experience and youth (2024). In March 2023 he said that he'd like a fourth term as PM because he wanted to leave a political legacy. This implies that he didn't have one after three terms as PM which means that his experience in running the country is worth nothing.

8. Signing the electoral agreement with ReA is historic (2024). It's rather a betrayal of what the Labour Party stands for including being against proportional representation.

9. My return to riding No. 5 is like Ram's return to Ayodhya (2024). Lord Ram didn't return to Ayodhya after losing general elections in Ayodhya and Lanka.

10. We managed the Great Recession well (2023). Ramgoolam said that IMF Boss Christine Lagarde asked him whether there was no recession in Mauritius during her 2012 visit, a period during which several countries were still feeling the effects of the Great Recession. Ms. Lagarde staying at a posh location and eating stuff like lobster thermidor and foie gras while getting a nice tan might have overlook the fact that not all Mauritians were laughing all the way to the bank especially after their long-term savings plans had been destroyed by a toxic bean-counter. 

We should note that points 1 and 2 above happened during that recession. Plus the economy had been so badly messed up that for the first time in the history of independent Mauritius an outgoing Finance Minister did not stand as a candidate. Five years later he lost after changing riding and in 2019 he lost again in a riding where he used to be very strong.

11. ReA is waging the same battle that the Labour Party fought in 1936 (2024). ReA want a dose of PR and have some very retrograde ideas. The LP has always been against PR and won two battles against it. The first one is in the 1956 Port-Louis by-election following the death of Guy Rozemont and the other one in the 1967 independence elections. We have a separate fact-check for the ReA guy.