Mauritian Voters Reaffirm Mandate of Incumbent PM
Mauritian Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth attends an OECD conference in 2018. (Flickr)
On November 7, Mauritius held its first election since incumbent Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth assumed office in 2017, according to Al Jazeera. The election results favored Jugnauth and his coalition, the Morisian Alliance, with his coalition winning forty-two out of seventy available seats.
Mauritius had previously been ruled by a coalition led by Pravind Jugnauth’s father, Anerood Jugnauth, according to Reuters. However, the elder Jugnauth unexpectedly stepped down in 2017, naming his son as his hand-picked successor. The current PM assumed office shortly after, despite the absence of a popular vote. His rise to power was accompanied by widespread criticism, with many arguing that the move was a subversion of the popular will. According to Al Jazeera, his opponents campaigned heavily on this, arguing that his appointment was an example of nepotism.
Mauritian voters seemed to have been largely unmoved by these arguments, however, granting the younger Jugnauth the parliamentary seats necessary for his coalition to form a government without the support of any other parties. The prime minister implored voters throughout the election to judge him based off of his short time in office, rather than how he assumed power, pointing to the strong economic growth during his tenure. Reuters reports that Jugnauth has also campaigned heavily on the social reforms achieved in the past two years, including the introduction of a monthly $240 minimum wage and an increase in pensions, two proposals that proved popular as Mauritius deals with rising income inequality.
Jugnauth’s tactics seem to have been quite successful as other coalitions in Parliament performed markedly worse, according to Al Jazeera. The center-left National Alliance party led by former Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam won seventeen seats and the Mauritian Military Movement (MMM), led by Paul Berenger, won nine seats. The regional Organization of the People of Rodrigues won two seats, according to Reuters.
Under Mauritius’ unique electoral system, only 62 out of 70 members of Parliament are directly elected. The remaining eight are chosen by the electoral commission as a means of rebalancing power between Mauritius’ four main islands. Al Jazeera reports that the Morisian Alliance won an additional four seats under this system, the National Alliance won an additional three, and the MMM gained one seat.
Despite the reforms achieved by Jugnauth during his first two years as prime minister, there is still considerable work to be done in his first five year term. Al Jazeera reports that the strong economic growth Mauritius has enjoyed over the past several years has been distributed unevenly, leading to income inequality and a youth unemployment rate of 22 percent. Mauritius has also earned a reputation as a tax haven for foreign companies. Although this has allowed the nation to develop a strong financial sector, it has also earned it the ire of the European Union which has been critical of the small nation’s tax policies.