Few men have had such a lasting impact on the history of Mauritius as Sir Anerood Jugnauth. Here is the story of how he created a new political party that would go on to dominate Mauritian politics and allowed SAJ to stamp his name on Mauritian political history.

June 1982 saw the swearing-in of a new government; the MMM-PSM coalition had just won a stunning 60-0 victory and Sir Anerood Jugnauth (SAJ) became the new prime minister. Its first decision was what to do with the 21,000 general relief workers hired by the outgoing government headed by Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam. One option was to sell 5,000 tonnes of rice received as food aid worth about Rs20 million. This would only pay a few weeks’ worth of wages, so it was decided to dismiss these workers instead. It was a hard decision, but it was just a precursor to the types of hard decisions that would ultimately help blow the MMM apart and lead to SAJ’s creation of the MSM.

“One of the big reasons for the growing differences within the MMM was because coming out a situation of high unemployment and two devaluations of the rupee, expectations from the new government that promised many things in its election campaign, were high,” recalls Jocelyn Chan Low, former head of the history and political science faculty at the University of Mauritius. But the gulf between electoral promise and economic reality was just too great. Then financial secretary Madun Bagwant explained just how bad the economic situation was: a huge budget deficit coupled with high inflation. One option was to turn to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $30 million loan. But the IMF demanded a series of economic reforms in exchange for bailing Mauritius out. This immediately created problems within the new government that had spent its years in the opposition castigating the previous Labour Party government for precisely signing such types of deals with the IMF.

Paul Bérenger, head of the MMM’s party apparatus and finance minister, wanted to sign the deal to secure funding from international donors, whereas SAJ opposed such talks, insisting instead on delivering wage increases promised in the 1982 election campaign. Bérenger proposed a new election to seek a fresh mandate to implement the austerity demanded by the IMF. SAJ disagreed saying that a fresh election so soon would demoralise the MMM. Ultimately, in July, the first budget of the government saw the introduction of a 5% sales tax, a Rs57 million reduction in the export tax on sugar and a proposal to raise rice and flour prices for which the Rs200 million subsidy would not be enough.

The differences come out into the open

The differences over economic policy soon burst out into the open. SAJ instructed then-commerce minister Kader Bhayat to resist price increases on rice and flour and subsequently, an article leaked into the press said that rice and flour prices would be raised only by 10-15 cents rather than the 25 cents that Bérenger was demanding. After a stormy meeting of the MMM-PSM parliamentary group on October 18, the next day Bérenger abruptly resigned as finance minister.

In the MMM’s view, it was the PSM led by Harish Boodhoo that was the source of discord within the government with the party’s politburo demanding a formal break with the PSM. Meeting with the Governor General, SAJ confirmed that it was the prime minister who decided on the naming and revocation of ministers. Things went even sourer when the MMM imperiously handed SAJ a list of names to replace the PSM ministers. “It is I and I alone who would name the new cabinet. This is my prerogative!” SAJ told the MMM parliament group. Things would have ended there, if it were not for another move that set things alight once again: at a public meeting at Eden College, an MMM orator, Swaley Kasenally, raised a question of whether the Governor-General would be bound to remove a prime minister if most MPs in parliament asked him to. “When SAJ heard about all this, he moved closer to the PSM after that.”

Things were spiralling out of control between SAJ and Bérenger and the growing rift between the two men was threatening to split the government apart. After a meeting between the two to repair the damage, it was agreed that Bérenger would take back his cabinet post. SAJ, who was feeling undercut by the party apparatus, reminded a meeting of the MMM’s assembly of delegates on November 7, 1982: “I will not tolerate anyone who tries to usurp my prerogatives as prime minister. I want this to be completely understood by everyone.” SAJ was going to be no one’s marionette. The next month in December, the MMM won 115 out of the 126 councillor seats in municipal elections. The MMM may have been fraying, but even at this late stage it was still a formidable electoral juggernaut. The PSM, however, technically still an ally, did not join in the campaigning and soon launched its own newspaper from whose pages it started trading barbs with the MMM’s official party publication.

The next crisis

The next crisis came out of the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation. Specifically, it had to do with its director general Gaëtan Essoo. Boodhoo, as minister of information, accused Essoo of taking his marching orders from culture minister Rama Poonoosamy instead of him. A crisis over the national anthem (on 11 March 1983, no less) in Kreol of the first Independence Day celebrations under the new government was averted when SAJ and Bérenger compromised over the fact that only the anthem’s tune would be played at the ceremony.

But the Essoo question was far from settled. On March22, Essoo’s sacking was announced in the press in a communique signed by the cabinet secretary, rather than the information ministry, indicating SAJ’s backing of the move. In response, 11 MMM ministers resigned and sat as simple backbenchers in parliament. “It was the dismissal of Essoo that led directly to that,” recalls Chan Low. A central committee meeting of the MMM on March 23 was supposed to navigate the party out of its fresh crisis, but the MMM criticised SAJ for calling the resignations a “betrayal”. Where to go from here? Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo proposed holding fresh elections, Bashir Khodabux proposed the status quo of the MMM continuing as backbenchers, but Bérenger wanted the MMM to resign and go into the opposition: a proposal that SAJ interpreted as effectively his expulsion from the MMM. It was clear that matters had reached a point of no return.

The MSM is born

That the MMM would break apart was now a foregone conclusion, with the party being split between Bérenger and SAJ on ethnic lines. For SAJ, this was a dangerous moment; he was a prime minister that seemed to have no party. Just a week after the MMM went into the opposition and Bérenger became opposition leader, SAJ announced the creation of his new party. Thus, was born the MSM. And SAJ moved swiftly to consolidate his position. Just three weeks after the MSM was created, the PSM was dissolved into the MSM. Labour Party MP Michael Glover asked to meet with SAJ with a proposal from Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam: the two Labour MPs would give SAJ their backing. Out of this reaching out, came an alliance with the Labour Party. In June 1983, SAJ announced general elections for August that year, with the MSM allying itself with the Labour Party and an ‘electoral arrangement’ with the PMSD of Gaetan Duval. The PMSD was brought on board to make up for the MSM and Labour Party’s lack of strength in urban constituencies, then dominated by the MMM.

Ultimately, the 1983 election saw SAJ’s new party, the MSM, win out getting just over 52 percent of the vote compared to the MMM’s 46.4 percent. Not a bad haul for a party less than a year old and created out of one man’s sheer force of will. SAJ went on to dominate Mauritian politics uninterruptedly until 1995. And once again in 2014, when he spearheaded the MSM’s return to power as a dominant force.