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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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?

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. 

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.

Gid Inkonple Eleksyon Parsyel Bel-Roz Kat-Born

42,052 elekter pe al vote dimans la semen prosen. Monn ekut pa mal emisyon kot enn pake kandida ti partisipe. Ansam avek se ki mo kone ala mo inpresyon lor zot.

Danrajsingh Aubeeluck. Lider seleb Parti Malin. Si bann zanfan ti vote se li ki ti pu eli. Mo panse li ti pu fer enn byen meyer minis de finans ki Sithanen.

Roshi Badhain. Dapre lord si li ti gayn pos minis ki li pe konvwate li ti pu ankor dan guvernman la. Kon fer komik me pa konpran enn pake zafer inportan. Par ekzanp li dir ki guvernman mank kas parski Ramgoolam finn tro depanse lor erport ek ring road. Li pa konpran ki se flat tax 15% kinn fu Moris dan tru.

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."

Extended Street Festival Puts More Lives At Risk

We don't seem to have learned enough lessons from the 30/3 tragedy when 11 people lost their lives in 2013 after 15 centimetres of rain fell on Port-Louis. We still have time to wisen up and move the Porlwi by Nature festival elsewhere. So as not to look stupid after the event. More bad things can happen over five days than over three.

• It's a wonderful idea to organise a street festival. There's not a lot that happens after 18h00 in Mauritius so the organisers definitely need to be congratulated.
• Thing is we've seen what happened on 30/3 (March 30, 2013) when 15 centimetres of rain killed 11 citizens (10 in Port-Louis) during the day -- see clip below from Antenne Reunion (https://youtu.be/ppVz408B-ps) and a report by Euronews (https://youtu.be/h62tjRYI0jo). It's appropriate at this time to remember that the two o'clock rule teaches us how things become a lot less manageable after sunset and that there's a given amount of time to retreat to safety.

Why Implementing Lalit's Advice Makes A Lot of Sense

You know, the one that recommends bizin plant manze lor later tablisman. This is good advice any which way you look at it. Let's start with a historical perspective. As Chart 1 shows you don't need to be the best thing since sliced bread to understand that the sugar industry has been in an irreversible sunset phase for a long time. It accounted for close to a quarter of GDP forty years ago. Now at less than 1% it's about twenty-five times smaller. That too despite the silly policy of 'competitive depreciation' aka politik rupi mari feb. We can even calculate the approximate time it will hit the zero mark. That should definitely inform our national strategic decisions. Keeping a corpse on costly artificial respiration many years after the soul has departed ain't exactly a smart decision especially when at the same time you cut the oxygen supply of incubators. We can keep a 100 hectares as a souvenir. At most.

Lepep Should Shift From TINA to TAMBO

TAMBO stands for There Are Much Better Options. It's an acronym I coined back in 2007 when Dr. TINAnen was busy breaking the economy with his flat tax. It essentially demonstrated that there were more useful things to do than to turn back the clock of social progress between never-ending stories of gato-pima and savat leponz. Like considering several good options and picking the best. Feasible if you're not endowed with a reverse Midas touch.

Spreadsheet Nirvana

The decision of going ahead with the Lepep tram is afflicted with the same There Is No Alternative disease and doesn't address the No. 1 problem of our transportation policy: the growth of private cars has been left unchecked for way too long. On April 1, Georges Chung was heard saying that there were no alternatives to the tram. Isn't that a jurassic comment? And a couple of days ago he seemed to be in a state of total bliss while standing in front of a spreadsheet of the project – we were also told that half-a-dozen accountants did not take up his challenge of finding faults in it – that has been presented literally as having no risk. But he doesn't want to share it with the media.

Mauritius Doesn't Need the Metro Express to Go Bankrupt

Because the Sithanen flat tax has been taking care of that. In quite a splendid manner actually. As we've pointed out recently the associated toohrooh has already reached a trillion rupees. Which is equivalent to several years of GDP. Anybody who has studied up to at least Form III understands that continually growing at less than 4% -- that too in depreciated rupee terms -- instead of the 8% you promised will land you in very deep trouble pretty quickly.

We've seen our PM make a surprising visit to India before presenting his budget. The implementation rate in the public sector has slowed down. If the Metro Leger has been replaced by a watered-down version it's not because we have so much money that we don't know what to do with it. A special purpose vehicle has appeared and the debt ceiling will be amended. What do all these signs tell us?

Sithanen Toohrooh Crosses Trillion-Rupee Threshold

This happened at the end of April. Yep, a trillion rupees of GDP is missing with respect to Dr. bean-counter's forecast of average growth of 8% after mindlessly slashing top tax rates to 15%. That's like our GDP for 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006 combined. 6 years of GDP. Or roughly those of 2011, 2012 and 2013 put together. So it's been a failure of epic proportions. Nothing has hurt Mauritius as much as the Sithanen flat tax. Absolutely nothing. No natural calamity has done this kind of damage. And boy did we have calamities in the last 50-60 years. Because nothing has shaved off more than four percentage points off the target growth rate six years in a row. As a comparison the consolidation we saw in the textile industry -- especially in 2003 and 2004 -- cut down growth by only 2% and that too in only one year. Let us also not forget the extra 22,000 Mauritians that were thrown into poverty over the first five years of the fake reforms. #prayforzanzibar.

One and Twelve Zeroes

1,000,000,000,000 rupees is not exactly the smallest number you'll encounter today. That's 257 times what the sugar industry is expected to contribute to our economy this year. No typos here. Two hundred and fifty seven times. Or if you want about USD29 billion at our seriously depressed exchange rate. That would have bought 3.6% of Apple at recent prices. Or the whole of Uber according to a valuation by NYU's Damodaran.

Lepep Not Mandated To Sell Any Part of the CWA

It’s Not in Their Manifesto

Page 19 has five points under the heading of “Fourniture d’eau”. One such point is “Remplacement à court et moyen termes les tuyaux désuets afin d’assurer une fourniture régulière 24 heures sur 24…” Basic common sense when we know that 1,600km of our pipes – some of which are over 50 years old – need to be replaced, right? Another one is “Aménager des barrages dans nos rivières pour récupérer autant d’eau que possible pour être canalisés vers les stations de traitement”. Who will disagree with this when we know we don’t capture enough of all the rainfall that we’re blessed to receive every year? The three other points deal with the Bagatelle dam, emergency water trucks and reforestation. No mention of privatisation of any part of the CWA or subterfuges like affermage. Didn’t see any plan for the CEB to create private companies to avoid the Central Procurement Board either.

Did Lepep Change Its Mind?

If it has it will have to ask voters for their permission on such a fundamental issue because there is no way it would have won 47-13 in December 2014 if one of its electoral pledges was to mess up our public utilities one way or another. It can do that in two ways. One is to call for fresh general elections and the other is to organise a referendum on the issue. A referendum is a lot better as it would enlarge our democratic space and enable Government to get the clearest of signals.

Wong Had Little to Do With Massive Amount of Poverty Created

Because he was not Finance Minister (FM) during any of the past eleven years when by far the most backward policies -- top tax rates were set too low and this broke the economy -- our country has known were implemented. For sure he has been a member of Cabinet during the last two and half years and as such has to accept part of the responsibility of the mess we're in because he could have vehemently asked for the end of the worship of the golden calf. Or at least distanced himself from it. Besides he was until recently a member of a party which has two interesting words in its name: Social Democrate.

XLD, Less So

Of course Xavier-Luc Duval (XLD) has a lot more to do with all the poverty created over the last decade because he was in the driver's seat for quite some time -- close to three years. But before we look into this let us not forget that poverty and the fight against it is heavily dependent on two quantities: the size of the economic cake (GDP) and how it is shared. From the 2012 household budget survey (HBS) -- which tells us about the sharing -- we know for a fact that the poorest two-tenths of Mauritian households saw their shares shrink by 10% to 15%. That's their smallest shares in at least two decades if you care to know. So we don't exactly get bonus points here. And what about GDP?