With a delegation headed by Minister Mentor Anerood Jugnauth having left to go to the UN to lobby for the Chagos issue, Weekly speaks to Milan Meetarbhan, former Mauritius Ambassador to the United Nations, about what is likely to happen on 22 June. We also take the opportunity to gauge his opinion about the state of our sovereignty vis-à-vis India and its loan and his take on the recent budget.  

The minister mentor has gone to the UN with a delegation to try and lobby ahead of 22 June. Do you think it’s the right move?

We definitely need to do a lot of lobbying before 22 June. Now whether the delegation should be led by the former prime minister or other ministers should also have been involved is another matter.

Who do you think should have been included in this delegation?

We are talking here of probably one of the most important lobbying exercises ever conducted by Mauritius in a multilateral setting. The delegations we are going to canvass in New York might be asking themselves why the minister of foreign affairs is not part of the lobbying campaign currently underway.

You were our ambassador at the UN. What do you think is going to happen when the case gets to the International Court of Justice (ICJ)? What do you think will be the outcome of the vote on 22 June?

We should not necessarily assume that there will be a vote on 22 June or even anytime soon. When an item is on the agenda of the general assembly, this does not mean per se that there will be a vote. There are always procedural devices that may be used to avoid or postpone a vote.

Like what?

As someone who has devoted so much time and energy to working on this issue for years, I would not like to go on record in public about what options there could be for the other parties involved.

Hypothetically, what other procedural devices could be used?

I am not saying that there will be no vote on 22 June but what I am saying is that we should not automatically assume that there will be a vote.

Cassam Uteem who is part of the delegation said that this was a good move and that nothing had been done for a number of years and finally the government was doing something about the Chagos issue. Was there such indifference before?

I don’t know whether Cassam Uteem said that and I would be surprised if he did. The most important development so far regarding the Chagos was the decision to go for arbitration. This was the most important and significant development on this matter in the last 50 years. The decision was taken in December 2010, the hearings took place between 2011 and 2013 and the ruling of the tribunal was given in March 2015. Now, I have to say that for almost four decades, the issue of our sovereignty over the Chagos was discussed essentially at the bilateral level between the UK and Mauritius, to the extent that it was discussed at all. Then, in 2004, Mauritius decided to take the matter before the ICJ because the bilateral talks had not given any results. But the UK had excluded the compulsory jurisdiction of the ICJ with respect to certain cases relating to members of the Commonwealth. Mauritius then said it would withdraw from the Commonwealth. The UK immediately amended its reservation under the ICJ statute to exclude the jurisdiction of the court with respect to former members of the Commonwealth as well. Following the decision of the UK government to amend its declaration under the ICJ statute, Mauritius decided in 2010 to start arbitration proceedings under The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This one luckily could proceed because the tribunal did have jurisdiction. So the tribunal’s award which clearly recognised the interests of Mauritius over the Chagos and declared the UK’s establishment of a Marine Protected Area to be unlawful, is the most significant development that has taken place so far on the Chagos isssue. But I would also like to add that after the decision to initiate arbitration proceedings in 2010, we also started working on a resolution seeking an advisory opinion of the ICJ and we started canvassing support in New York for the resolution. While waiting for the ruling of the tribunal, the resolution concerning the advisory opinion was put on hold. So if anyone is saying that there has been nothing done up to now, that is not correct. The most significant milestone so far was the decision to initiate arbitration proceedings in 2010. And we had the next move after the tribunal’s award already planned. I am glad that the new government maintained the same strategy and went ahead with the resolution on the advisory opinion which had been put on hold.

So with what has happened, does this give you reason for optimism?

Let’s see what happens if there is a debate and a positive vote. If there is a vote, then the general assembly will request an advisory opinion from the ICJ. The court’s practice has been that even if there is a resolution from the general assembly, the court itself will decide whether it has jurisdiction over the issue or not. If we ultimately get an advisory opinion, it is still an advisory opinion and is not binding on the states concerned.

So what’s the point?

It clarifies the law, for one. Also the highest international court in the world declaring the legality or otherwise of an excision of colonial territory will have high moral authority. We have had advisory opinions in the past that have been ignored and others that have played a major part in shaping the course of future events.
 

Assuming that the advisory opinion is in our favour, it could still be ignored, couldn’t it?

It could. But I hope that the US and the UK, that always advocate the rule of law at the national and international levels, will take into consideration the legal opinion expressed by the highest international court.

For the time being, are we doing the right thing apart from not sending the right people to the UN?

I don’t know how much canvassing has been done. I don’t know how much support we have already.  Also, a request for an advisory opinion is addressed to the ICJ in the form of a question, so the formulation of that question is crucial. There have been instances of advisory opinions, one recent case where the question asked was not the right one and the opinion obtained from the court was not what the sponsors of the resolution had in mind. I am sure that our lawyers must have done some extensive work on the draft resolution and the question we already had in 2013.

Do you think the resolution will be co-sponsored by friendly countries, like India?

Ideally, on a major issue like this, it would be important to have a resolution that is co-sponsored by a number of other countries. We don’t know yet whether the Mauritian resolution will be co-sponsored, and if so, by which countries.

What will this mean for our relations with the UK and the US?

I think one cannot really relegate matters of sovereignty and territorial integrity to a lesser priority for the sake of other policy issues. Sovereignty and territorial integrity are important to every nation and there can be no compromise on this matter.

Speaking of sovereignty, are you one of those who feel that our sovereignty is threatened by the loan given by India?

I look at it from a different angle. Just when we are about to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of our independence, we hear a minister of finance presenting a budget which contains so many references to foreign aid, whatever be the source. We have not heard something like that in a budget speech for a very long time. So I think many Mauritians will find this rather unfortunate. That the minister of finance has to go abroad a week before his budget so that he can then come up with support for his budget proposals is a matter of concern. The fact that we have reached the point where we actually need foreign aid to balance our budget or to move ahead with infrastructure developments will cause a lot of concern about the present state of the economy. It’s not so much about who is giving that aid, but rather the feeling that the country suddenly – and after a very long time – cannot stand on its own feet and needs that kind of aid, on a massive scale. Are we worse off now?

Don’t you also worry about the reasons behind granting this loan?

That’s a different matter altogether.

Aren’t the two matters related?

They may or may not be. The question that is of main interest to us in Mauritius is why Mauritius finds itself in a position today where it has to seek foreign aid for its budget and the minister of finance has to rush to a foreign capital to help pass his budget. For me, this is the issue.

People have said that India could not have given the loan without getting something in return and there is even talk about an Indian military presence in Agalega…

In such deals, there is always a quid pro quo. We would be naïve to believe otherwise. What is the consideration for any foreign state to provide this kind of assistance? There must be total transparency. I don’t think deals on such matters should be concealed from the people of the nations involved.

Regardless of the sources of finance, did Pravind Jugnauth present an acceptable budget?

Let me share some thoughts with you about what’s happening with our budgets. We are going through a radical transformation of this exercise, and I am not sure that everybody is conscious of this. If you look at the last budget, more than 80 per cent of it is just cataloguing items of expenditure.

Hasn’t it always been that way?

No, it was different. Budgets in the Westminster system have always historically been an opportunity for governments to deliver something like a State of the Union address in the US, where governments would make an economic policy statement, outline the domestic and global challenges and announce some purely budgetary measures. Every budget in every country will have a number of new items of expenditure. In the case of Mauritius, we have been a welfare state that’s been under consolidation for over 50 years and we keep adding something new to it every year. That is the normal course of business. I am happy that we can sustain the country as a welfare state, and measures to help consolidate the welfare state are always welcome. But going beyond this, we have to reflect on the budget day exercise itself. A lot of what was said in the last budget could simply have been put online. There is no need to mobilise the whole country, take hours of airtime and days of discussion in parliament for essentially cataloguing items of expenditure with the sole purpose of drawing maximum political capital for the government of the day. I must say that even in England things have changed recently, but when they changed it they were honest enough to downgrade the importance of the budget speech. In Mauritius, on the other hand, we have changed the nature of the budget speech but have continued to hail it as the most important economic event of the year.

When did this change begin?

We saw it coming for some time, but the last budget was a 180 degree turn. I think that ideally what we should do if we are going to go in that direction, is have two exercises. In one, you don’t have to stand and read your proposed expenditure item by item for two hours. This is ridiculous. Some measures are important and you can highlight them, but taking the time of parliament and of the nation to list items in a financial statement does not make sense. I don’t know whether this has been proposed before, but I believe there should be two exercises: one, a budget exercise with a budget in the real sense of the term, with a budget exercise talking about things like the current account, expenditure, revenue and so on. But there has to be a second separate exercise which would be an annual economic policy statement when the government tells us about the state of the economy, where we are, what challenges are faced by the country, at the national and global levels and how the government proposes to face those challenges. I do not expect a government to come up with a new economic policy each year, but we should distinguish a budget speech from a major economic policy statement that must be like an annual State of the Union address on the national economy. There is a huge distinction between an annual ritual of promising goodies to the populace and having an adult discussion on economic trends and challenges at least once a year. The second exercise I am proposing, or the second leg of the annual exercise if you wish, will be a report card on the economy, goal-setting for the nation and an action plan for the next fiscal year or years.

The last time that happened was when Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo presented his budget and Anerood Jugnauth presented his ‘economic vision 2030’. Nobody accepted that saying that there was already one budget so why have another one?

You rightly said presented his vision. I am not talking about the vision of a particular individual; I am talking about the government’s assessment of what’s going on and where are we heading. A government’s vision is also important in terms of goal-setting. I looked at that document you referred to about the prime minister’s vision. It is totally inconsistent with parliamentary democracy. It is for the cabinet to adopt a common vision and present it to the nation. For an individual to present his vision, charting out the future goals for the country makes a mockery of our system of government. This year, the son followed in the footsteps of the father and told the nation, ‘I want my vision to be your vision’. First, he never obtained a mandate from the people for implementing his vision. At best, the people voted for the vision of the Alliance Lepep, if there was such a vision. Second, if anyone wants his vision to become your vision, he wants you to surrender to him your power and right to think. 

Forget what it’s called, did you find any good measures in the exercise?

As far as the consolidation of the welfare state is concerned, this is what we have been doing for the last 50 years. Every measure in that direction is welcome, even if there are questions about how to sustain it. As you know, Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam called for free education as early as the 1950s and we introduced free health services and free education when the nation was still struggling to emerge from colonisation and under-development. Then free transport. Building the welfare state has been incremental. We keep consolidating it and making sure people are not left behind. We add more bricks to the edifice every year. So this continuity is good. But if we were expecting a deeper analysis of the global situation and its impact on Mauritius and what is being done about it, or what the challenges for the region or for small island nations, these were not addressed at all.

Paul Bérenger said that after the budget there was a whiff of an election in the air. Do you share his opinion?

If I were to share his opinion, I would say that this is not only as a result of what was contained in the budget. There are other disturbing events which would lead observers to believe that there must be greater integrity, transparency, competence, clarity and  less uncertainty about the future and a new direction and these can only happen as a result of a new early election.

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