The MMM has faced yet another bleeding out of its ranks. This time from its rural party machine with the exit of Madan Dulloo, Vinay Subron and Sangeet Fowdar. That the ruling party, the MSM, is eager to encourage defections within its competition is a given, but why has it met with the greatest success in poaching from the MMM? And what has made the MMM peculiarly vulnerable to this strategy?

1.The historical poaching

THE recent exit of Madan Dulloo, Vinay Subron and Sangeet Fowdar, who are leaving the MMM opposition party, adds their names to a growing list of ex-MMM heavyweights who have looked for greener pastures elsewhere, particularly within the government ranks. They have joined former MMM stalwarts, such as Ivan Collendavelloo, Joe Lesjongard, Alan Ganoo, Kavy Ramano, Steven Obeegadoo, and lesser players, like Zouberr Joomaye, Tania Diolle, and Dorine Chukowry.

However, the MSM has a long history of fishing in the MMM pond. “In fact, it’s how the MSM got started,” says historian and former academic Jocelyn Chan Low, “it started off by getting people out of the MMM”. In 1983, the MSM founded by Sir Anerood Jugnauth (SAJ) was the result of a split within the MMM, one part of which became the MSM. It would go on to dominate politics for the rest of the 1980s, with the help of the Labour Party and the PMSD; and in 1993, SAJ succeeded in engineering another massive rift within the purple party.

As an MMM-MSM alliance in the 1991 election began falling apart, the MSM encouraged a split within the MMM against its leader Paul Bérenger in 1993. That year, a faction led by Prem Nababsing wanting to continue in government with the MSM faced off another faction led by Bérenger wanting to break away and conclude an alliance with the Labour Party led by Navin Ramgoolam. In October that year, Nababsing and his followers expelled Bérenger from the MMM while Bérenger likewise ousted the Nababsing group, both sides purporting to be the ‘real’ MMM. One in the Nababsing group, Jean Claude de l’Estrac, faced off against Bérenger in a by-election in No.19 in January 1995. After a long legal fight in the Supreme Court, the Nababsing group would become the RMM, which would go on to back the MSM in the 1995 elections and disappear shortly thereafter. “This is not something new; the MSM has always taken people from the MMM, some of them go on to create small parties and some go directly into the MSM,” Chan Low explains.

2.The enticement of the MSM

It is a truism in Mauritian politics that every ruling party attempts to use the trappings of office to entice defections from its rivals. However, few have succeeded to the extent that the MSM has getting MMM people to defect. So that begs the question as to why the MSM find it easier to lure people out of the MMM…

A number of factors account for this. Firstly, there is the much longer relationship between the MMM and the MSM as parties. Not only was the MSM itself formed out of the MMM, but both parties have enjoyed a much longer time in power together as coalition partners than the MMM has had with any other party. Both parties have been in power together between 1991 and 1993 – before that coexisting in an informal arrangement as from 1989 where the MMM in anticipation of this alliance backed the MSM government from the opposition benches. Then again between 2000 and 2005 (the only coalition government to complete its full term) and during which the MMM leader Paul Bérenger became prime minister in 2003 as part of a power-sharing agreement with the MSM.

By contrast, the MMM has had a much shorter history of working with the Labour Party. Both parties were only in power together between 1995 and 1997 and their last attempt to forge an alliance for the 2014 elections ended in disaster for both parties. There is also the fact that the Labour Party is a direct competitor of the MMM in certain areas in a way that the MSM is not. The MSM, traditionally a predominantly rural party, is not a direct threat to the MMM in urban constituencies; the Labour Party by contrast, has since 2005, made inroads in certain areas – most notably the capital Port-Louis – breaking the MMM’s previous domination of those constituencies.

The second major reason why the lure of the MSM is much stronger to MMM ears is because the MSM uses language that directly appeals to the MMM base. “The MMM moving to the centre has opened up a gulf between its leadership and its supporters,” says Chan Low. And it is this gulf that the MSM has proven adept at exploiting. In 1983, for example, the MSM described itself as a “new MMM but with a socialist programme” and proceeded to thrash the MMM using its own old language. Starting in 1976, the previous Labour-PMSD government headed by Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam approached the IMF for assistance to shore up a struggling economy. Back then the MMM criticised the government for turning Mauritius into “an IMF colony”.

However, upon coming to power, the MMM decided to proceed with a $30 million IMF loan and in return it reduced  by Rs 56 miillion the tax on sugar exports – which was introduced by the previous regime to finance social spending as a way to raise living standards rather than increasing wages – and introducing a sales tax. When the MSM came into being, it gleefully pointed out the MMM’s U-turn on the IMF, doing incredible political damage to the MMM. “The MSM for electoral reasons has always presented a pro-poor image,” explains Ram Seegobin of Lalit, “as the MMM got closer to business, the MSM appealed directly to workers and in a way that appealed to the rank of file of the MMM. The MSM has always managed to outflank the MMM from the left and appeal directly to its base in a way that no other party has.” This has continued to this day: “Look what happened recently, the MSM has raised the old age pension and introduced a minimum wage,” says Seegobin, “now you can dismiss these as electoral bribes, but old people see pension rises and workers see a minimum wage. They appeal to the base and it’s this base that then pushes for defections.” This is what has made the MMM historically susceptible to people jumping ship to the MSM on a scale that no other party has succeeded in pulling off.

«The Msm has a long history of fishing in the MMM pond. “in fact, it’s how the msm got started,” says historian Jocelyn Chan Low, “it started off by getting people out of the MMM.»
 

3.The MMM malaise

However, this only explains why people leave the MMM much more than any other party to join the MSM. What it does not explain is why the MMM is so vulnerable to defec- tions in the first place and why the MSM’s blandishments are so irresis- tible to so many within their own party. Here too a number of factors are at play. The first is the MMM’s lack of electoral success in recent years. Out of all the major parties, it has spent the least amount of time in government and since 2005 it has remained firmly within the opposition ranks.

That poses a problem for the MMM, which since the 1970s has gradually attempted to morph from the leftish cadre/activist-based party into a centrist electoral machine. “The MMM was an activist party before, but if there is no activism happening anymore, how do you keep your followers?” asks Chan Low, “the party machine has dried up over the years and has become very weak; you can bring people out to meetings, but how many are in the field at election time? Right now, it risks being perceived as a has-been party living on past glory”. And the lack of success in this decades-long transformation into purely electoral politics is grating; “for a while now the MMM programme has been just about how to win elections, that’s what its base has been kept focused on, but what happens when you keep losing?” Seegobin posits.

Then there is the problem of how the MMM has defined itself since the 1980s. For the 1982 election, for example, the MMM came up with an alliance with the PSM. “We resisted that because that would have been an admission that the MMM was an urban party, not a national one, that needs a rural ally,” Seegobin points out. Since then, the MMM has progressively been annihilated in rural constituencies and restricted to just urban areas – and losing ground even there. The recent 2019 election marked a new low with the MMM getting less than 8 percent of the vote in No.7, with the MMM’s Madan Dulloo (once floated as the party’s prime ministerial candidate) getting just over 6,000 votes in No.6.

A very far cry from the 40 percent of the rural vote that the MMM managed to secure even in its electoral defeat of 1983. Today, the MMM sits in an informal entente with another urban party, the PMSD, as well as Roshi Bhadain – who in the 2019 polls stood in No.20 and before that in 2014 in No.18 – and Nando Bodha who stood in No.16 – not exactly rural constituencies. “This signals that the MMM seems to have finally given up on rural constituencies,” says Seegobin, adding disillusionment to an already-discouraged rural party machine, “so MMM activists in rural areas just ask themselves why they are still there”. This would help explain why we are now seeing people from the MMM’s rural base such as Vinay Subron, Sangeet Fowdar and Madan Dulloo exiting the party, following an earlier exit by another of the party’s rural lynchpins Pradeep Jeeha before the 2019 election.

Between failing to win elections and disappearing from the rural areas, the MMM also has to contend with the MSM’s peculiar way of taking away their people. “One of the things that Pravind Jugnauth is doing, and to an extent what SAJ did too, was not just to compensate defectors but overcompensate them,” argues Seegobin. And the MSM has been generous to those leaving the MMM tent. Before the 2014 elections, it managed to lure away Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo, who was in charge of the MMM’s economic commission, subsequently making him finance minister and Ivan Collendavelloo, making him deputy prime minister until he was forced to step down recently over the St. Louis affair. After the 2019 election, others have followed: Alan Ganoo now has two ministries and is in charge of the Metro Express project; Kavy Ramano has a sizeable ministry of his own and Steven Obeegadoo is deputy prime minister, another ex-MMM man replacing Collendavelloo. “The MSM is not just offering peanuts,” Seegobin points out.

«The party machine has dried up over the years and has become very weak; you can bring people out to meetings, but how many are in the field at election time?»

4.The MSM’s shift in strategy

The new raft of defections from the MMM also points to a subtle shift in the MSM’s political strategy. Prior to the 2019 election, for example, the strategy was clear. “The MSM wanted to become a national party and not just relying on rural areas, this is what made the MMM and the PMSD such good hunting grounds for the party,” Seegobin insists. This meant prioritizing ex-MMM people with urban followings to supplement the MSM’s strength in the countryside. So, we saw curious episodes like the newly-formed Plateforme Militante imploding after the MSM wanted Steven Obeegadoo to get it votes in Curepipe, but not Pradeep Jeeha. Or its reliance on Jocelyn Gregoire’s unofficial support.

Since then, however, the MSM has lost a good deal of strength over the Covid-19 economic fallout and must prepare for an all-out fight in rural constituencies at the next elections against the Labour Party that until recently was the natural party dominating that battleground. That sense of vulnerability means that the MSM cannot afford to be picky on where the defections come from. “Now it is all about consolidating itself wherever it can,” says Chan Low, “if it sees dissension within a party, it will try to drive a wedge in and get people into the MSM fold, it doesn’t matter whether it’s urban or rural”. This is why today, after defanging the MMM of many of its urban fighters, now it won’t likely be looking away from rural ones either.