The Senior Lecturer at the University of Mauritius and Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) Washington, DC talks to Nad Sivaramen about the Mauritian Parliamentary Performance Scorecard she is designing.

In your remarks, Dr. Kasenally, you mentioned the “Mauritian Parliamentary Performance Scorecard” to evaluate the performance of Mauritian parliamentarians. How will this tool work?

Firstly, it is important to emphasize on the fact that the legislature is an important space where accountability, oversight and transparency should be exercised. Unfortunately, in the case of the Mauritian legislature we have seen over the years that the latter has become very subservient to the executive and this does not auger well for democracy in Mauritius. The MPPS would be a tool that would assess / evaluate individual parliamentarian on three functions: intervention in parliament, at committee level and quality of interaction with their constituents. The aim is not merely to compare scores between parliamentarians but to also push for a coalition of reformers within parliament in the medium to long run.

Do you intend to evaluate the performance of the Prime minister also?

Well the next stage would be to have a similar scorecard for the whole of the executive as reform and the enhancement of our democracy happens when all tiers of power are transparent, accountable and open to scrutiny.

You made it clear that there is no value to compare Mauritius with African countries with very bad economic track records. Why?

When you measure yourself with countries that have undergone (still undergoing) decades of ethnic conflict, autocratic rule and economic meltdown, no doubt Mauritius fares very well. Democratic inroads are measured by the number of initiatives that individual countries invest to move up the democratic pole and if you pay attention to Mauritius in the last 15 years we have hardly done anything to consolidate our democracy, on the contrary we have witnessed democratic stagnation.

As a Democracy Fellow for the US National Endowment for Democracy, how is your research work important for and relevant to Mauritius?

Well I am spending my time as a NED fellow to meet up with key experts in the area of democratic consolidation and this will have direct impact in shaping my conceptual framework for the MPPS which will allow me once back in Mauritius to roll it out.

What would you respond to people in Mauritius that might think it is kind of unpatriotic to publicize the cracks and tensions beneath the glossy picture perfect picture in such an international forum?

I think that it would be extremely unpatriotic to go on showcasing Mauritius as a picture perfect model! The idea is not be critical for the sake of being so but on the contrary to flag and be attentive to the cracks and deficiencies of the Mauritian democratic model so as to develop alternative approaches and strategies.

Key reforms have stalled in Mauritius. The three main political parties seem to have hijacked our country. Many democracy advocates talk more and more about “gloom and doom predictions”. Is an angry and informed citizenry the answer to those fears?

I personally think that anger is not a solution but an informed, organized and mobilized citizenry is. There are so many cases across the world where citizens have changed the destiny of their countries – the colour revolutions in the ex-USSR countries, the green revolution in Iran and many others. At the moment, Mauritian civil society is not sufficiently bounded and if the latter is to act as any form of pressure group, there must imperatively be a sense of collectivism for a common cause.

You said that the melting pot is now a boiling pot. However we still have a ballot culture. Let’s talk about Africa – and its bullet culture. Recently after Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire, one can legitimately ask whether we can expect clean elections in Africa one day…

Indeed holding clean, credible and fair elections in many parts of Africa is a big conundrum. Elections are important for democracy and if citizens do not see them as a means towards the process of democratization they can easily become cynical of them. Therefore, to ensure credible and legitimate elections, the necessary institutions must be in place and more importantly they should be free of any political interference or manipulation.

The power sharing agreement we witnessed in Zimbabwe and Kenya does not seem to be working. What is then the way forward to avoid post-electoral conflicts in Africa?

One cannot afford to be defeatist about Africa as it is a continent of great hope. I personally believe that post-electoral violence / conflict is the result of the ignorance of the perpetrators who allow themselves to be manipulated by certain war lords. Therefore I think the best means is through open dialogue and communication and following the violence in Kenya there have been a number of citizen initiatives such as Ushahdi which allows anyone to submit crisis information through text messaging using a mobile phone or email. Similar citizen vigilantes exist in Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal.

In less than a month, Africa’s largest country will hold a referendum on whether the country should be divided into two entities (The North and the South). Why is Sudan such a complex situation to deal with?

Sudan is the second country in Africa (after Eritrea was created following its split from Ethiopia) to see the creation of two distinct countries. One sincerely hopes that there will not be a replication of the problems that have docked relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The main problem is oil – the South has the oil and the North has the pipe for selling it. Let us hope that the January 2011 referendum can help to palliate matters and the real test case is after the referendum and peace and stability will be sustained.

The West has long considered that it can save Africa. But now the dominant perspective is that western policies are a substantial part of the problem (and have been so for centuries). From your Washington, DC perspective, how do you see the relations between the West and Africa (if we can talk of the continent as one entity)?

Well the US has comprehensive Development and Governance (D&G) assistance programmes to the developing world and the African continent is an important beneficiary. The major problem with development assistance is that a lot of it has been poured into Africa but unfortunately without any substantial impact. Currently there is a lot of debate about evaluating and measuring the impact of democratic assistance especially in a time when the American economy is facing prolonged recession.

Last question that I ask to the Senior Lecturer in Communication and Journalism Studies: is Julian Assange your hero, or is he a villain? A little bit of both…

The fact that Assange was one of the contender to the Time magazine ‘person of the year’ speaks volumes. I personally believe that Assange’s Wikileaks has changed the way information will be communicated and exchanged. The hierarchy, monopolization and secrecy of news by governments are bygone days and governments across the world will have to review and revise the manner with which they communicate with their citizens.

Nad SIVARAMEN