A Credible Alternative

Editorial

It might be too early in the day to establish whether the Labour Party (LP), the MMM and the PMSD will eventually join forces in an electoral alliance to challenge the MSM and whatever the Jugnauth party will be associated with at the next general elections most likely to be held at the end of the current government’s mandate. In the meantime, a lot of water will surely flow under the bridge as it happens in local politics, and it should be expected that different permutations could take place on the political scene bringing together alliances between traditional parties and non-parliamentary ones as well as with and between various other interest groups, including the so-called citizens movements.

Whether the LP-MMM-PMSD will make it to the next general elections will depend entirely on the assessment of the leaders of the respective parties of their combined electoral weight to successfully challenge the MSM et al in 2024 or beyond, and this is what could explain the current apparent hesitancy of the LP leader to fix his sights on a definite electoral alliance with the MMM – not so much in light of their past unworkable mésalliances, but mostly on his party’s ability to sell convincingly another alliance with Paul Berenger’s MMM  to the LP’s traditional electorate in constituencies (5 to 14) which in the main elect parties to power. The combined electorate weight of the LP and MMM does not always produce the desired results as the elections of 2014 had demonstrated, neither would another three-cornered battle do any of these two mainstream parties any good as evidenced by the 2019 results.

Besides the risks posed by unforeseeable circumstances in the run-up to the next elections or by loose cannons and other contingencies that may rock the boat down the road, which is usually why alliances are only concluded a few months prior to election day, what seems of particular interest to the LP leader presently is to ascertain whether the electoral shifts that have taken place during the last decade are sufficiently broad and deep, or only conjectural.  How the electorate will react to another LP-MMM alliance after the 2014 experience and whether that alliance will be perceived as yet another carry-forward of fundamentally untenable association made among political leaders for specific purposes, is the crux of the matter. The answer to that question is not discernible at this stage. Read More… Become a Subscriber

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 19 August 2022