| | Le sens d’un anniversaire | | | | Modifier la taille du texte: | A | | | A | | |
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| | Par:- Nazim Esoof
On 13/08/2009 |
Le pilotage politique de son parti par Paul Bérenger sera déterminant à la réussite du 40e anniversaire du MMM. Jusqu’ici, le leader du parti mauve organise les choses en fonction d’une série de réunions de mobilisation, de la rituelle conférence de presse hebdomadaire et on a même eu droit à une conférence sur les grèves du début des années 1970.
Ces initiatives sont-elles suffisantes pour préparer un événement comme celui d’un 40e anniversaire? Je ne le crois pas. Car, il y a manifestement un manque d’audace, de créativité et un surcroît de conventionnalisme.
Cet anniversaire est le moment idéal pour faire découvrir et redécouvrir un parti qui marque l’histoire de l’île Maurice depuis son accession au statut d’Etat indépendant. Faire connaître aussi ce parti à une génération de jeunes qui ne s’intéresse qu’à distance à la politique. Faire revivre enfin, chez les plus âgés, cette flamme d’un militantisme vacillant.
Le MMM n’a pas véhiculé que du bérengisme tout le long de son existence. Si c’est actuellement le cas, il y a une partie de l’histoire de ce parti qui, par contre, se conjugue étroitement avec l’histoire de l’île Maurice. C’est cette partie de son cheminement qu’il aurait fallu mettre en valeur.
Le MMM n’est pas seulement un parti qui repose sur les «acquis» de son passé. C’est aussi un parti capable de se réinventer. Non seulement en renouvelant son personnel dirigeant mais aussi en s’appropriant les enjeux de l’avenir. C’est cette nouvelle mission qui aurait dû être à l’agenda de ce 40e anniversaire.
Un anniversaire, c’est un moment qu’on arrête pour entrer dans l’éternité de son être. Est-ce que le MMM passera à côté de ce moment? | |
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| aubvalen | | | Je suis d'accord avec Nazim. Mais justes une remarque, le MMM est outragement boycotter par la MBC et les images sont trafiquer au montage. Et ca, personne ne trouve rien dire meme les journalistes des radio supposément privée sont motue et bouche cousue. Les radio privée aussi trés souvent deforme les faits pour faire de l'audience. Alors monsieur Nazim que proposer au MMM pour changer de cette série de réunions de mobilisation, de la rituelle conférence de presse hebdomadaire . | | | jimmy | | | Is there something coomon or universal to draw from the story in the sixties and now from the MMM.love aaj kal??? | | | TRIBUNE | | | Un 40e anniversaire? Il y a manifestement un manque d’audace, de créativité et un surcroît de conventionnalisme.
The road to independence was a long and arduous one. Political parties have alternated in office, led by some of the most influential thinkers and leaders in the world. Deeply entrenched party loyalties characterise our politics, and every five years candidates contest tight elections as an impassioned electorate expresses its confidence in, or displeasure with, the status quo. Mauritian enjoy a wide range of civil liberties, afforded us by the very existence of our democratic political system. No democracy is static or guaranteed, but must be constantly nurtured. By participating in our own governance, we maintain and improve a system of which we can be proud. After all, our political legacy is an integral part of who we are, who we were and who future generations of Mauritian will be. The forthcoming 40th anniversary celebration of the MMM – it should be an opportunity to celebrate what it means to be a citizen living in a country with a credible alternate political force, to reflect on the achievements and disappointments of the past decades and to consider how we can build on our strengths to improve the life of the nation in the years ahead. It’s a curious fact that the prime minister is calling for a three quarter majority inside Parliament at the next electoral contest. The mood of a vacuum in the field of politics makes the present regime full of winds in its sails, yet there are no genuine programmes for in depth reforms that will lift the standards of life of the citizens. The Social alliance caucus is rejoicing the whole political space; it would only be human nature for this to elicit another burst of Labour self-congratulation as the true keeper of the sacred flame of justice, compassion and concern for the underdog in Mauritian society. Already some heads of parastatal bodies are flagging their names as the potential candidates at the next general election, and their intervention on the national television in their capacity of ceo is a sure hint that the campaign is unfolding relentlessly. There is deep feeling and rightly so that the equal opportunity Act is full of sound and fury but no substance. Yet the basic principle on which the Labour Party was founded was greater equality between masters and servants. The essential principle animating the Labour Fathers was citizens’ greater freedom to pursue their individual destinies within the framework of a new nation. However the MMM came in the hearts and minds of the Mauritian people for the then regime ruled without caring for the widening abyss between the majority neglected mass and the tiny few that lived as fat cats. Political principles generally serve better as ideals than imperatives. The most ardent libertarian would accept that a certain amount of equality (such as equality before the law) is necessary for meaningful freedom. Convinced egalitarians generally concede that freedom is a good thing as long as no-one is too successful at exploiting it. An issue to ponder during the 40th MMM year is Mauritian’ long-standing reluctance to support equality of outcomes ahead of an ideal of equal opportunity and whether Labour’s passion for levelling down was a peculiar by-product of the era of robber baron capitalism. Mauritian sometimes admire zealots but find it hard to vote for them. We seem to prefer leaders who temper their ideals with common sense to those who proclaim a rigid programme based on a single over-riding idea. The three quarter majority slogan smacks the coming of absolute power and uncompromising regime, we already had a taste of defiant minister that relax while World Bank officials been kept waiting , and making us believe that everything be business as usual. There is no local equivalent of the Statue of Liberty beckoning to the “poor huddled masses yearning to be free”, but the way we have turned a colony into one of the free-est, fairest and most prosperous societies in Southern Africa should fill Mauritian with pride. This is a year when even the most sceptical partisan should savour our national achievements: limited government under the Republic and the role of a free judiciary as well as the secret ballot, votes for women, and the right of appeal Court. Too often when raising some important issues, the chorus replies been:” I was the first one to administer such legislation. “ . Then lest we forget, remember the legislations for direct control of the press is a cherished ambition of the in place regime. The National Television may change its management head but it stays in the same mould –that of its masters voice. The free press get sanction through curtailing the delivery of Government press notices, and should we come to a situation of leaving the stable door open, and closing it when the horse has run away. Understandably enough, Labour’s cheer squad has tried to create a mythology which depicted opponents as self-interested, dupes of vested interests, or supporters of economic doctrines based on the survival of the fittest. The year ahead should be a time for fair-minded reappraisal of everything that has helped to make modern Mauritius, including the MMM Party which, in one guise or another, has governed the country inside a coalition groupings. In a country where big State owned company CEOs earn ten times the prime minister’s salary and where the national leader is no more than first among equals, no-one (at least no-one in his right mind) would enter politics out of thrusting self-interest. Those who enjoy giving orders or seek the lifestyle of the rich and famous should not (and mostly don’t) enter politics. Almost without exception, people in parliament want to do good, to help others, to advance long-cherished ideals and to realise a calling which is more than a job, a hobby, an interest or a career. If values were not more important than interests, politics would degenerate into a sordid calculation of how to rob Peter to pay Paul. Of course politicians are acutely interested in political advantage but the notion that voters typically succumb to a form of bribery reveals more contempt for the electorate than for politicians or political parties. Mauritian voters are no more inclined than others to believe that “what’s good for General Motors is good for America” which is why politicians go to such lengths to demonstrate that sectoral policies are good for everyone in the long term and really a way to secure the national interest. One of the most enduring calumnies against the MMM Party is that it is “the party of the rich”. In a democracy, siding with the rich against the poor is a recipe for permanent electoral failure – unless everyone earning above the median income of about Rs35, 000 a year is judged to be “rich”. No-one would want to advantage people who are already doing well without, at the very least, idealising the creation of wealth in which case the argument is about competing ideals rather than competing interests. Quite apart from any ethical considerations, helping the rich (as opposed to helping the poor to become rich) is hardly going to win votes. As a political strategy, “soak the poor” makes even less sense than its opposite. The Labour Party, in fact, has always been much more effective at playing interest group politics but only because it’s been able to proclaim a secular equivalent of “blessed are the poor”. Still, the success of a political party is not generally determined by its ability to devise new policy but by its ability to represent values, ideals and instincts which touch people’s hearts. Successful political leadership makes vigorous use of new ideas but is ultimately “beyond ideology” because it involves winning allies as much as winning arguments. John Maynard Keynes famously proclaimed the power of ideas over vested interests even in the case of “practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences”. By any standards, this has been an MMM party of ideas but today’s MMM leadership has to ensure that it cannot be portrayed, in Keynes’ imagery, as “the slaves of some defunct economist” rather than practical problem solvers. Keynes also quipped that when circumstances changed, he changed his mind. Political parties need to change their policies but keep their principles. They also need to be wary of “absolutising” any of them. They must understand how consistency can become “the hobgoblin of tiny minds”, that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing and the extent to which unintended consequences dominate human interaction. The fact that key policies and actions of the MMM make sense in terms of individualism and market forces but embody other values too is a strength rather than a weakness. The dream of greater personal freedom is probably the MMM Party’s nearest equivalent to a “light on the hill” but if it is our pre-eminent value it is, like the prime minister in a Westminster system, first among equals. It might be the value, ideal and instinct which commands the broadest loyalty and evokes the widest sympathy among MMM Party members but it is not the only one and cannot always prevail. Above all, it cannot be systematised or converted into an ideology without losing the human context in which its appeal is most deeply felt. Notwithstanding their frequent inability to articulate them, men and women live by ideals. Shared ideals and enduring values are what turn crowds into communities and peoples into societies and ultimately civilisations. They form the bonds of kinship and common purpose which constitute the social fabric and which allow diverse individuals to find a sense of place and belonging in something which transcends themselves. When it is not an undergraduate exercise in mental gymnastics , the so-called tension between “Labour” and “MMM” turns out to have far more to do with political jockeying than with serious philosophical conflict. Instinctive MMM don’t need very much appreciation of history or of real life to understand that no-one succeeds on his own and that freedom can only be achieved by an individual-in-community. It is impossible to be free outside a context of stability and order. Without law, freedom degenerates into anarchy. Similarly, anyone with a sense of history’s lessons learnt the hard way understands that conserving anything requires the freedom to adapt and evolve. In a world where nothing exists in isolation and everything is connected, “labour” and “MMM” turn out to be complementary values. The difference between a “labour” and a “MMM” is not that one values freedom and the other doesn’t or even that one asserts and the other denies that freedom comes first. The difference between the ways labour and MMM value freedom is, perhaps, more the difference between love at first sight and the love which grows over time. Internal debate about whether the MMM is fundamentally liberal or conservative usually misses the real point: that the party is destined to be a “broad church”. In retrospect: “It took the name ‘MMM’ because it was determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary, but believing in the individual, his rights and his enterprise. In sum, the range of choices offered to the electorate at the time of elections is not the only indicator of democracy having become truly representative. In our first-past-the-post system in which the winner takes all, the processes through which these candidates emerge is of great significance. While the Election Commission can do so much and no more in its monitoring of party functioning, it is ultimately pressures within the party alone which can remedy the sclerosis that seems to be setting in for some of the old national parties. New strategies of rejuvenation will need to be devised. The deepening and strengthening of democracy, making it truly representative passes through the democratisation of the internal functioning of parties. On this 40th anniversary of MMM, many explanations have been offered for the remarkable resilience and robustness of its democratic polity. Thinking of MAURITIUS- How does one reconcile the undemocratic elements in the functioning of its parties with their overall contribution to making democracy work? The answer lies in the politics of accommodation and consensus which binds the political class together, despite their party affiliations. It is a bond forged on the electoral battlefield which overrides other considerations and creates a commonality of interests which make it possible for Government- Opposition relations to be conducted within mutually agreed parameters. Democracy is ultimately the gainer, even if representative democracy still seems a distant dream.
| | | Roukaya K | | | Indeed it is an excellent time to think of the renewal of our politics! Open the debate, engage the citizen , propose new ideas is what modern day politics should be about. It is appening across the world why not in Mauritius? It is high time for us to realise that politics is our common good claiming and shaping it as a collective force will bring about the much needed political renewal. | |
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