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Mauritius, 1984 A publication of ihe African Studies Program of The Georgetown University Center for Strategic and International Studies No. 34 • September 25, 1984 Mauritius, 1984 by Larry W. Bowman For all but the most ardent students of Indian Ocean founded in 1969 by Paul Berenger, a young Franco­ affairs, the series of shifts in Mauritian politics in the Mauritian. The goal of Berenger and the MMM leader­ past two and a half years are little short of bewildering. ship was to build a non-ethnic, class-based party. The arcane infighting traced below takes place within Throughout a stormy decade of organizing, the MMM the context of a vibrant democracy, undergirded by a slowly built an anti-Labour coalition rooted in minority thriving free press which endeavors to make sense of ethnic and religious groups (Indian Moslems, Tamil and some of the most complex racial and ethnic politics Telegu Hindu minorities, Creoles, and some whites). found anywhere. But even as Mauritius demonstrates With the end of the economic boom in the late 1970s, to the world that democracy remains an effective and the opposition party was also able to attract support legitimate mechanism for the transfer of power, a from the Hindu working class. Its program of more range of social, economic, and geopolitical burdens jobs, an increased minimum wage, increased welfare, and constraints substantially define and limit the and a reorientation of Mauritius' foreign policy from an choices available to any leader, party, or coalition, irre­ overtly pro-Western toward a more nonaligned stance spective of professed ideology. had a strong appeal to the young of all communities. From the 1976 election onward, the MMM held the The Political Kaleidoscope largest block of seats in the Legislative Assembly. From the late 1930s, the dominant figure in Mauritian Support for the LP and its coalition partners-the politics was Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, a Hindu Parti Mauricien Social Democrate (PMSD), a moderate physician, and the dominant political force was the to conservative party based in the Creole community party that he led, the Labour Party (LP). When Maur­ and led by a conservative Creole politician, Sir Gaetan itius received its independence from Britain in 1968, Duval, and the Comite d~ction Musulman (CAM), Ramgoolam became the new nation's first prime minis­ which represented the more conservative Moslems­ ter, a position he would hold for 14 years. In the first eroded in the late 1970s as job creation slowed to the years after independence, Ramgoolam and his party point where the government could not begin to keep up benefited from economic growth rates that averaged 9 with the employment demands of the country's rapidly percent per annum from 1970 to 1976, the highest growing population, foreign investment slumped, and growth rates experienced over that period by any devel­ the sugar industry reeled from a combination of erratic oping country with a population of less than 5 million. prices and three years of successive cyclones. It was in Employment opportunities increased as an Export Pro­ this setting of economic and political malaise that the cessing Zone was developed, the tourist industry boomed, June 1982 election took place. and the dominant sugar industry flourished. The bene­ The 1982 Election. The MMM's tactical alliance fits of this growth were shared with the people via ex­ with the centrist Parti Socialiste Mauricien (a Hindu pansion of free education from primary school through party, led by Harish Boodhoo, that had split from the college and a generous array of social services. Under LP in 1979) ensured that the LP would not get all of the Labour Party rule, annual per capita income rose to votes from the Hindu majority. Meanwhile, Ramgoolam nearly $1,000, quite high by Third World standards. sought to build an anti-MMM alliance with Duval's The LP's main competition for the political allegiance PMSD and the CAM. of the Mauritian population in the post-independence The major campaign issue was the economy. The era was the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), MMM pledged that much could be done to improve the Editor: Helen Kitchen, Director of African Studies • Research Associate : J. Coleman Kitchen, Jr. • Production/Circulation: Sheilah Mclean CSIS Africa Notes, Suite 400, 1800 K Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 • Telephone (202) 887-0219 • ISSN 0736-9506 2--------------------------------------------------------------· severe unemployment problem through the elimination This was too much for Boodhoo, who was particularly of waste, nepotism, corruption, and tax evasion. The LP opposed to the removal of rice subsidies and to ,holding and its partners had 'little in common other than their the line on wage increases at a 'level well below the in­ opposition to an MMM victory. They waged a fear- · flation rate. ~oined . by four ministerial colleagues, he mongering campaigii that focused.on the specter that resigned and withdrew the PSM from the coalition. this would be Mauritius' last free election if the MMM­ The measures advocated by Berenger- especially PSM coalition came to power. To strengthen the gov­ limiting subsidies on basic foodstuffs and the sales tax ernment's hand on the unemployment issue, the Reagan -alienated constituencies important to both the MMM administration allowed the Ramgoolam government to and the PSM. His rejoinder to charges that he was re­ sell $2 million worth of food received through AID in neging on 1982 campaign promises was that no social­ the weeks before the election and use the proceeds to ist program was realistically possible until Mauritius create 21,000 make-work jobs. could rebuild its economy sufficiently to release it from When the votes were counted, however, the MMM­ IMF dependence. PSM alliance had won all 60 contested seats on the Jugnauth stood with Berenger through the October main island (42 went to the MMM, 18 to the PSM). crisis, but differences within the coalition were not A small party based on the island of Rodrigues, the really resolved, and a second crisis erupted in March Organisation du Peuple Rodriguais (OPR), won the 1983. This time the MMM itself split, with Berenger only other two elected seats. In keeping with the tradi­ and 11 of his colleagues resigning from the cabinet. tion that the prime minister should come from the Again the differences were primarily related to eco­ Hindu majority, the premiership went to Aneerood nomic policy. Berenger and his allies wanted to pursue Jugnauth, a London-trained barrister. Boodhoo became the policies of economic orthodoxy and sought long­ the deputy prime minister. Berenger, the secretary­ term commitments to this approach from their MMM general of the MMM and the leader of the alliance, took colleagues. But Jugnauth, like Boodhoo and the PSM on the finance portfolio. Berenger's first act was to fire in October, was becoming increasingly concerned about the 21,000 people who had just been employed. "There his Hindu constituency. Charges that Berenger was is no money and there are no jobs," he said, "and it pro-white (he had reduced the export duty on sugar, would be criminal to maintain the fiction of work being which helped the Franco-Mauritian sugar barons) and available." pro-Creole (he had suggested that Creole should be­ Despite the various ideological stances taken by the come the national language of Mauritius) added a new competing parties, the main reason the LP lost the dimension to the quarrel. These ethnic and racial issues election was the effect of the economic slump on the were secondary, however, to the differences about eco­ work force and the communication gap between an nomic policy. With the Legislative Assembly now so. 81-year-old politician and an overwhelmingly youthful divided that no one could command a parliamentary electorate. It is difficult to devise an adequate class majority, a new election became inevitable. analysis of the various coalitions because of the simul­ The August 1983 Election. This election found a taneous appeal made to class, caste, religious, and new array of parties, united primarily in their opposi­ communal interests. Electoral and political alliances tion to the MMM. The main coalition partners were the depend as much upon personal, cultural, and communal Mouvement Socialiste Militant (MSM), a party formed factors as ideology. under the leadership of Prime Minister Jugnauth after The MMM-PSM Coalition. Despite its overwhelming he left the MMM (or the MMM left him-the details of victory and the complete repudiation of LP stewardship, the split are not quite dear); Boodhoo's PSM, now fully the new government held together only nine months. integrated into the new MSM; and the Labour Party­ At the heart of its tribulations, just as had been the PMSD partnership so decisively defeated by Jugnauth case with the LP, lay disagreements about how to han­ and the MMM only 14 months previously. Perhaps only dle Mauritius' economic problems. in Mauritius could such a grouping (Jugnauth, a prag­ By October 1982, Berenger and Boodhoo were mov­ matic socialist; Ramgoolam, a pro-Western mixed­ ing into a sharp power struggle. Although both parties economy man; Boodhoo, an admirer of Gandhian mor­ had run on the promise to increase social services, alism; and Duval, a right-of-center politician on both Berenger concluded soon after taking office that the domestic and international affairs) find common cause. MMM-PSM coalition had inherited an economy that Against this coalition the MMM stood alone, under was wholly dependent on the International Monetary the leadership of Berenger, who was now committed to Fund for balance-of-payments support. Consequently, becoming prime minister if the MMM prevailed. The he reasoned, Mauritius had little choice but to support MMM base remained in the lower castes of the Hindu many of the economic reform measures that had been population and in the other minority populations.
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