Bérenger Statements That Don't Survive A Fact-Check

1. I'm the real father of the economic miracle (2019). Something Ramgoolam acknowledged in parliament a few weeks ago. The problem with this statement is that Bérenger was Finance Minister for only nine months as from June 1982 and alliance partners spent a lot of their time fighting each other which left very little time to hatch such a miracle. Plus Bérenger returned as FM between 2000 and 2003 during which time he presented not one but three budgets. We know what one of his colleagues had to say about the economy back then. And that there are problems with this notion of economic miracle.

2. Mauritius is the best managed country in the world (2003). That's what Bérenger repeated several times when he was PM. You need to wonder which yardsticks he was using to arrive at such a conclusion. 

Thoughts on Electoral Reform (I)

Not sure I understand the logic of giving us only 42 days to send our submissions on electoral reform after taking 389 days -- that's nine times more -- to get the white paper out. It gets funnier when you realise that our Government is proposing nothing new. Nope. The Government is instead and essentially recommending that we adopt the January 2012 Sithanen report: something that is deeply flawed and shrinks dangerously our democracy. And which got a University of Mauritius student an ovation when he rightly said -- after hearing it from the horse's mouth -- that it doesn't solve anything.

The six weeks we have to read and comment on the report is also and evidently way too short when you notice the number of interesting articles -- of the non-TINA variety -- that appeared almost immediately in the Forum and elsewhere. I take a quick look at a few at the end of this piece.