The burden of choice by default

In all fairness we must thank our collective wisdom for bringing us to accept the outcome of the polls. Since 1968 our people have been mature enough to give our full support to the verdict of the polling stations: either keeping the previous leader and his team or seeking a new one to steer the country in some other direction, but we all accepted the outcome.

Our consent however deserves to be re-examined periodically: the present circumstances where our country is now being driven by someone who was not voted for his present post. This poses the question of his legitimacy. Did our three crosses of December 2014 consent to this new direction? What about the opposition - for the worse or better, our system designates them by default, i.e., a pis-aller imposed in the form of the second-best electoral candidates failing to garner the majority of votes. In a democracy, it's our collective consent that gives legitimacy to the action of representatives. Should it not also apply to those who are entrusted to the job of counterbalancing the government in the legislative assembly?

Else, the by-default opposition will have as only programme an eternal wait for their turn at the wheel, without any concern for where our country should be heading...

Comments

Post a Comment

Moris Zindabad! is served by various contributors all allergic to bs and simple-minded binaries. The comment board strictly welcomes on-topic thoughts.

Popular posts from this blog

"Aret kouyonn dimoun ! "

Image
D’emblée, situons cette réprimande qui sert de marqueur à ce billet. Elle aurait aussi bien pu émaner de beaucoup de Mauriciens désillusionnés. Il s’agit ici de l’une de nos voix les plus pertinentes et engagées, en l'occurence Reaz Chuttoo, à propos de la compensation salariale. Il fustige le calcul censé corriger la perte de pouvoir d’achat : l’inflation mesurée à 3.6 % est fondée sur un revenu moyen mensuel de MUR 27000 et elle est loin de corroborer le vécu d’un citoyen percevant un salaire de, disons, MUR 8500. En clair, une grande majorité de Mauriciens sont en général sous-compensés et subissent ainsi une perte de pouvoir d’achat réelle et constante. Les répercussions sont multidimensionnelles.  Comme dans le cas du prétendu taux élevé de citoyens propriétaires d'une résidence, les politiques nationales sont fondées sur des chiffres farfelus. Résultat, rien de plus prévisible: quasiment aucun résultat. Si ce ne sont que des inadéquations systémiques et pour sauver la
Read more

High-income nation: santi li ?

Image
At $8.99 per month, your basic Netflix account didn't seem expensive so you went for the premium one at $15.99 - not much, really at Rs 36.50 per US$ back then. But just wait until you'll need to renew your subscription to the tune of Rs 680, instead of Rs 582 pre-COVID era - Rs 100 more per month! (It looks like you will have to add another Rs 100 for VAT purpose regardless of how they will be siphoned) . All that because since then the US$ has soared from the pre-March 2020 levels of Rs 36.50 to above the Rs 40 mark at present. The World Bank has started classifying Mauritius in the 'High Income' category in July 2020 - the slide of our Rupee has boosted the number of Rupees that the World Bank's arbitrary threshold would give you. But did that make your life more comfortable than before? To explain this, the PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) is handy: though imperfect but closer to our reality, it is a means of weighting how much people make by the cost of living
Read more

“Why can’t we analyse Game of Thrones instead of The Merchant of Venice?”

My digital native son has always expressed his teen-spirited reluctance to embrace education that massively rewards content recall at the expense of effective learning. Any lapse at school would be blown out of proportion. I could only resort to nuancing his glaring truth. Recently, he came up with yet another statement of unconventional wisdom: “why can’t we analyse Game of Thrones instead of The Merchant of Venice?” Mindful academics at universities do use, say, more contemporary Blade Runner as support after all. This time I was floored. William Shakespeare, or any other writer or subject for that matter, however distinguished, that fails the connection test will struggle to spark the desired curiosity conducive to the ultimate goal: coaching to develop discernment and skills to blend analytics and intuition (thank you Daniel Kahneman , a psychologist of judgment and decision-making) in savviest fashion. Silo mentality, uncreative mindset and pedantism won’t smart us up, will they
Read more