The vice prime minister and the minister of housing and lands, Showkutally Soodhun, has decided to cut diplomatic ties with Qatar. Just like that. The decision came in a leaked communiqué firmly putting Mauritius in the Saudi camp against Qatar. The poor press officer at the Housing Ministry had no idea about it, nor apparently, did the Foreign Ministry whose job it is to do any cutting or building of relations with other countries. In fact, everybody got to know only when the Saudi press gleefully reported on it. And Soodhun’s leaked communiqué swiftly followed on his ministry’s letterhead.

It’s too late to be an April fool prank. So how can a housing minister decide on foreign policy out of the blue and have the audacity (or stupidity) to shoot from the hip? Still less a housing minister that has held three ministerial portfolios, is number four in the cabinet hierarchy and has been in politics since 1987: long enough to know the difference between a Housing Ministry and a Foreign Ministry.

But this is not the first time that Soodhun has made Mauritius a laughing stock. In 2016, he made statements while on a visit to Riyadh that Mauritius condemns Iran and he backed Saudi Arabia in its proxy war against Tehran. Also, a statement made without asking anybody. And it’s not like Soodhun’s constant boasting of his personal ties to the Saudi royal family (no less) has led to anything. On his Facebook page last year, he boasted that he had managed to convince Riyadh to import Mauritian doctors. Nobody went. Eighteen billion rupees was supposed to come from Riyadh for Heritage City. Nothing happened. Soodhun said he wanted to give state land to Saudi investors wanting to come to Mauritius. Nobody came. Soodhun tried to rope in the Saudis to help fund the Metro Express. Nothing happened. And we had to go to New Delhi cap in hand. So why tolerate these serial embarrassments?

The Foreign Ministry replied to the leaked communiqué from Soodhun’s ministry with a tepid one calling for dialogue between the states in the region (ironically, Iran’s position on the issue) while avoiding to mention that it is in response to a communiqué ostensibly coming out of Soodhun’s ministry. The strange thing is that this is not a contradiction between allied parties in a coalition, but supposedly between two ministers from the very same party!

Why does Mauritius find itself in these idiotic situations? Because it doesn’t really have a foreign policy. All foreign relations are handled on a personalised basis by an over-mighty PMO. Just how lightly foreign affairs is taken can be gauged from the fact that the current foreign minister is a former finance minister put to pasture, more interested in gold speculation than world affairs. Unsurprisingly then, foreign relations tend to be directed by politicians more interested in appeasing local vote banks and communal lobbies. Everything in the world is seen through the myopic prism of local identity politics gone wild. National interest be damned. 

But Mauritius cannot afford this kind of clownish behaviour right now. It’s engaged in a fight with the UK over the Chagos islands. And Port Louis needs as many allies as it can get in the UN to put its case to the ICJ. The last thing it needs is to alienate other countries for no reason or seem to be a banana republic. Soodhun needs to be muzzled. At least until the adults are done with their business at the UN.

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