Opinion : Mauritius Needs an Honest Conversation With Itself

A couple of months ago, I warned that if the government failed to open a real dialogue about the country’s socio-economic direction, frustration would only grow. Unfortunately, it appears I was right.

Blaming every hardship on the previous government’s mismanagement was always going to have a short shelf life. A second budget of reforms was one too many, and the public has stopped listening to the excuse.

The economic reality

Mauritius is a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean with very few resources. Years of economic mismanagement coupled with populist measures have made the government finances what it is today. Mauritius is a small island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, with few natural resources to fall back on. Years of economic mismanagement, layered with populist giveaways, have left public finances in the state they are in today. A national tolerance for corruption has made things worse. What we live with now is the accumulated legacy of those choices:

• Pension increases we could not afford.
• A metro built despite popular rejection of the project.
• Free bus transport for students, when the measure could have been far better targeted.
• Contracts cancelled out of pure political vengeance, at the taxpayer’s expense.
• The MIC fiasco.
• Lucrative contracts handed to insiders, and laws written to suit political operators.

The population is right to demand answers, and to ask for its share of the wealth it is told exists. Our situation is that of someone waking from a heavy night out and refusing to admit they partied too hard.

The other half of that reality is quieter but more damaging: imported inflation, an over-reliance on a handful of economic partners, and a steady loss of productivity built up over decades of misdirected investment. Selling beachfront villas is not investment in productive capacity. We have flattered ourselves with growth figures that did little for productivity. We built offshore sectors that, sooner or later, hit a ceiling in the skills they can absorb. Learning new skills was never the hard part — the hard part is finding opportunities to use them.

No faireness, full corruption

The opposition’s framing of “the all-knowing” against “the ordinary person” lands because it is true. “All-knowing” is not a jab at anyone’s education; it describes the cunning with which those in power protect what they have gained. That is exactly why the dividend exemption provoked so much anger.

Consider the anti–Rabin Bhujun case. Take a capitalist sitting on billions in assets, buried under layers of companies and holdings whose accounts no one can read. Declared revenue: zero. Dividends: millions of rupees. SAP: full. Where is the fairness in that?

A teacher who gives private tuition must declare that income — and the tax office will count their students and challenge the figure if it looks too low. Yet there is little or no framework governing doctors’ fees, lawyers’ fees, or construction prices. Ask who finances political campaigns, and who fills the benches of Parliament, and you have your answer.

Then there is corruption itself. There are those who take part in it, those who look away, and those who, having glimpsed it, decide it licenses their own behaviour. Corruption erodes a society’s moral compass. So many are assumed to hold illegitimate wealth that each arrest — of someone still legally innocent — plays out like a blockbuster.

And there are the broken promises. Where are the police reforms? The investment in the judiciary? Promises made when it was clear from the start they could never be kept. The Rivière des Anguilles dam has become shorthand for exactly this.

The symptoms

What follows may sound extreme, or far-fetched, but bear with me. I believe there is a link between the level of corruption in a society and the level of incivility and road rage on its streets. When people witness injustice, they express it somehow. When they feel governed by ethnic belonging rather than by merit, they express that too — and one outlet is the aggression we see on the roads. The logic is simple and corrosive: if the politician can behave that way, why can’t I manage even a tenth of it?

The way forward

We can hold as many elections as we like; nothing will change until we, as a nation, have an honest conversation with ourselves. We have to own our mistakes and commit to building something better. And we are all implicated — in the racism shown to foreign workers, in the call to a politician for a favour, in the money accepted during campaigns, in the abuse of free public services, in the demoralising of a public servant, in the road rage. All of it.

Politics as we practise it will never allow that honesty to surface, because those at the top have either lost their credibility or cannot see a way out. Too many hold their positions through family name alone (yes, Joanna, that includes you).

The chickens are coming home to roost — that much is clear. Finding a settlement that feels fair to everyone will not be easy, and the impetus will have to come from a newer generation willing to talk honestly. A few concrete starting points:

• A truth commission, where anyone can come forward about past corrupt acts in exchange for a pardon. The very act of telling it in public would be a form of national healing.
• A genuine, solidarity-minded conversation about where we want to be, socio-economically. That means accepting that a private number plate is not a trophy to show off, that the wealthy pay their share, and that wealth is created for everyone rather than a few.
• Wealth creation tied to skills and opportunity. Growth at any cost is the wrong ambition; growth that raises everyone’s wellbeing is the right one.
• A charter of humanity for entrepreneurs and decision-makers, in the private and public spheres alike — a commitment to treat every person with dignity and respect.
• An honest reckoning with the fact that we are all, ultimately, immigrants to this island. No one is more Mauritian than anyone else. We should welcome those who come after us rather than exploit them — and the government could start by regulating the working hours of foreign workers.
• Ministers drawing the minimum wage, symbolically. Politics has become a vehicle for personal enrichment; if you truly care for the country, prove it here.
• A proper platform for national dialogue. Social media is not it — its algorithms reward emotion over argument.
• An end to the European-style parliament, including its dress code. Anyone should be able to stand for office and wear what they judge appropriate; the suit-and-tie requirement quietly shuts many people out.
• Higher taxes — yes — but paired with real solidarity.

PS: I would like to see concrete proposals from the trade unions, the private sector and the political parties. Our elections are not fought on ideas, and our reforms even less so. Here is a rule worth adopting for national debate: no critique without a concrete proposal. Over to you, Madam Speaker — and please, let us not reduce this to coconut water.