1985 started with a paradox: the ruling MSM-led alliance was overseeing a great period when it came to economic growth but it was nevertheless going through a rough patch politically. Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth’s (SAJ) address to the ring in 1985 was taken up responding to allegations of corruption against his government by the opposition MMM, led by Paul Bérenger. The charge was led against six ministers in SAJ’s government, charges which the prime minister dismissed as propaganda to turn the public against the government and to scare away foreign investors, who were helping to fuel the growth that the economy was witnessing in those years.

SAJ responded to the MMM’s campaign by getting then-Governor General Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam to announce the set- ting up of a commission of inquiry headed by former Supreme Court judge Hurrylall Goburdhun. The commission had a wide remit, “to enquire into allegations of fraud and corruption made, if any, by the press, politicians and members of the public against ministers and officials of the government”. At a meeting at the home of MMM MP Subash Lallah, the leaders of the MMM decided that Paul Bérenger, Alan Ganoo, Dhar- manand Fokeer and Jean Claude de l’Estrac would depone at the commission and began compiling a list of charges against ministers in SAJ’s government.

A bridge too far

But the Goburdhun commission only led to a further legal fight that dominated the year – and ended up creating a bigger legal monster. When hearings began, the commission refused to hear the evidence of the opposition party, dismissing it as “hearsay”. Eventually, the commission ended up rejecting the arguments coming from MMM and in its report stated that “none of those who made the allegations could prove any such allegations before the commission”. For the opposition, the commission had failed in one key respect: instead of acting like a commission and looking to dig up evidence of what the MMM was arguing, it had instead proceeded like a law court, demanding evidence of what it was hearing.

The Goburdhun commission le- vied a fine against the MMM leaders who had testified before it. In response, the MMM turned for help abroad; in this case, from Indian lawyer Ram Jethmalani who would help them contest the commission’s conclusions at the Supreme Court. The fines were not taken away – the immunity that the MMM parliamentarians claimed did not extend to commission testimonies the court ruled – and it rejected their demand that the court get the government to set up a fresh commission to investigate the MMM’s charges of ministerial corruption. The Supreme Court argued that setting up a new commission of inquiry was not in its power.

The real problem came in the form of one of the recommendations made by the Goburdhun commission. In one of the rare instances of judicial overreach – where an excess of judicial zeal threatened democratic norms – Goburdhun recommended that a new section 29A be added to the Criminal Code. Just what this law should look like Goburdhun spelled out in his report: “Any person who published or in public utters an expression which imputes or can be understood to impute a fact which is injurious or contemptuous of, or abusive of the government, a minister or his ministerial function shall, unless he can substantiate the fact, commit an offence…” The government eagerly pounced on this recommendation, coming up with a new bill almost identical to the one proposed by the Goburdhun commission, and adding a maximum penalty of three years in prison and a fine of Rs 10,000 for criticising the government or a minister.

1985 was also the year of the first municipal elections since the 1983 general elections that brought the MSM to power, heading an anti-MMM coalition of everyone else.

The MMM argued that the bill wanted to create two classes of citizens: ordinary ones on the one hand, and government ministers on the other, who would be above criticism by the public, the opposition and the press. The parties then in the opposition – the MMM, the Labour Party of Satcam Boolell, the FTS of Sylvio Michel and the Union Dé- mocratique Mauricienne (UDM) of Guy Ollivry – formed a common front to oppose the bill. Reacting to criticism of the bill, SAJ declared, “If I were in Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam’s place in 1971, I would have hanged Paul Bérenger!” The law was eventually passed on March 16, 1985 and stayed on Mauritian law books until it was repealed on December 21, 1990.

The municipal elections

1985 was also the year of the first municipal elections since the 1983 general elections that brought the MSM to power, heading an anti-MMM coalition of everyone else. SAJ and the MSM were confident about the polls: in the 1982 municipal elections, the MMM had bagged 116 out of the 126 seats up for grabs in municipal polls that year. At the national level, it swept all five towns as part of its thumping 60-0 victory over the Labour Party and the PMSD. That, however, was before the split and the founding of the MSM. In the 1983 general elections, the bloc headed by SAJ’s MSM had managed to prise 14 urban seats from the MMM.

The MMM got 116 out of 126 seats at the 1982 municipal elections. In the general elections held that year, it bagged all the 30 urban seats, but lost 14 in 1983. It was feared that should it lose these elections, it would go into de- cline… because it drew its strength from the towns. If the 1983 general elections were any indication, the MSM could expect to make more inroads into the MMM’s urban heartlands at the municipal level too. In fact, so confident was the MSM that the head of the government – SAJ – did not bother to campaign on behalf of the government bloc, preferring to leave the municipal campaign in the hands of his smaller allies – at the time Gaetan Duval, Harish Boodhoo and the RTM led by Beergoonath Ghurburrun – made up of former Labour members who chose to stay in government rather than join Boolell in the opposition.

On the side of the MMM, they focused their fire on familiar themes: drugs, price rises, the government’s heavy-handed treatment of trade unions, the arrest of journalists in 1984 and alleged phone tapping, and the opening of parcels by the post office at the orders of the government. The MMM reached out to the Labour Party led by Satcam Boolell (who had by then broke with SAJ’s MSM) and initiated talks about an alliance for the municipal polls. These talks went nowhere for two reasons: within the MMM, there was resistance to an arrangement with the Labour Party which could end up making inroads into the MMM’s political territory, and the party might find it tough to jointly run municipalities with Labour. On the other side, Boolell insisted that the majority of municipal tickets in Vacoas-Phoenix and Quatre-Bornes should go to candidates from the Labour Party.

No agreement between the two parties could be reached, and the 1985 municipal polls ended up becoming a three-cornered affair, pitting the MSM-led alliance against the MMM and the Labour Party fighting on its own. The MMM coined the slogan “win in 1985 to win in 1988”: the municipal polls were supposed to add momentum for the party heading into the next national elections which were sup- posed to take place in 1988. The MMM received a shot in the arm from a political blunder by the government: the municipal polls were taking place in December, and just ahead of the polls, the government announced that it would not be paying the end-of-year bonus for its employees. Handing the MMM a new political cudgel and getting the unions ranged against it, the MSM-led government had set itself up for a drubbing. When that came, the MMM ended up with 56.68 percent of the votes, sweeping all the municipal seats aside from Vacoas-Phoenix, the MSM trailing at 37.4 percent and the Labour Party with 5.46 percent.

As if the troubles of the government were not enough, December 1985 also brought with it two other crises: the first was the passing away of Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, whom the MSM had kept as a divining rod to attract voters that had previously voted Labour. The second was the arrest, on New Year’s Eve, of four government MPs at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, with a suitcase containing 20 kilos of heroin while on a flight from Bombay. Just a week earlier, the report of a select committee on drugs headed by Madan Dulloo had been tabled. Dev Kimcurrun, Ismael Nawoor and Serge Thomas eventually made their way back to Mauritius, with only Satyanand Pelladoah formally arrested and charged with bringing heroin into Amsterdam.

The legacy of 1985

The events of 1985 undoubtedly plunged SAJ into one of the toughest patches of his career and went on to influence what came just after. After being released from Amsterdam, Pelladoah came back to Mauritius and refused to leave his parliamentary seat. The Amsterdam scandal and the drubbing at the municipal polls also led to a steady haemorrhage out of the government which threatened its working majority, forcing the government to hold the general elections early in 1987.