The crises we are facing presuppose that the worst is yet to come; they offer the Prime Minister, Pravind Jugnauth, a unique opportunity to redeem himself and prove his detractors wrong, says the author.

Sir,

Many a folk have addressed open letters to you, sharing their expert analyses on the public health, the economic and the developing financial crises besetting our nation and the world at large and offering their advice and recommendations, mostly in good faith and in a spirit of patriotism, no doubt. Although, for some, the emergency is seen as a providential opportunity to crawl out of deserved oblivion or anonymity. At least, that’s how I took the counsels proffered, although some in your own government, for whom no hook is solid enough to hang their inflated egos on, might have taken the unsolicited views, opinions and advice as condescending and injurious to their misplaced pride and conceitedness.

In our society notorious for a dearth of open, honest and uninterested debate, and in which public commentary is almost exclusively mellifluous and aimed at cajoling your person and your greatness to curry favour, only the temerarious, some might even say the foolhardy, dare tell you the truth. Rightly or wrongly, you have acquired the unenviable reputation of brooking no criticism or dissent. Some recent oppressive and arbitrary arrests and harassments attest to this. Be that as it may, I shall nonetheless add my two cents worth. Again, I will do so in an élan of patriotism because I want you to succeed, for the country looks up to your leadership to steer us to safety as we navigate through the treacherously choppy waters of the multiple unprecedented crises befalling us. We are all on the same boat which will either sink, taking all of us down, or reach safe harbour with a maximum of survivors.

You see, Prime Minister, the crises we are in the midst of and of which the worst is yet to come, offer you a unique opportunity to redeem yourself and prove your detractors wrong. Allow me to explain. Whether you like it or not, you carry innumerable stigmata, which, try as hard as you may, you will never be able to shake off and obliterate. Limited space does not permit me to list some of the salient ones here. Moreover, it would be inelegant and unsavoury to do so at this juncture, considering the heavy burden you are shouldering to see us through these crises and the pressure you must be under. Instead, this is a time for us all to close ranks, unite and support the national effort to save our country as best we can.

It’s in the face of adversity, trial and tribulation that one discovers the true mettle a man is made of, more so one in a leadership position. The killer virus has exposed and exacerbated the fault lines in our economic fabric which the good times had hitherto somewhat concealed or enabled us to blissfully overlook or conveniently pretend didn’t exist. I have in mind here the parlous states of public, national, corporate and household finance. You cannot be held directly responsible for the latter two, fuelled by credit binges attributable to historically low real interest rates, excessive systemic liquidity and consumerism respectively.

As regards the former two, namely public and national finance, you have presided over their stewardship for a bit longer than the last 5 years. I will not dwell on the pipe dream of a ‘second economic miracle’ you and Daddy sold us in 2014. Instead, as the saying goes, it has been anything but. At a time when every cent counts to save our economy from collapse, if not from an irreversible complete meltdown, public debt, despite creative accounting and sleight of hand with all your colossal off-balance-sheet borrowings and guarantees, stands at an all-time high, some estimate well in excess of 70% of GDP. It is right that you should intervene to save as many jobs and businesses as possible so that when hopefully the virus will have been vanquished, we are not left with scorched earth but with a functional economy primed for restarting.

Meanwhile, these are traumatic times for wage earners in the private sector and the multitude living precariously from hand to mouth in the informal sector. The former, who constitute the bulk of the workforce, do not know if they’ll have jobs to go back to when economic activity restarts or, even if the businesses which employed them manage to survive, whether they will be forced to accept salary sacrifices to preserve as much employment as feasible. The private sector primarily produces the wealth on which taxes are levied to finance the public sector. So, I put it to you that the economic damage & pain coronavirus is inflicting on the nation should be equitably borne by all of us, irrespective of which sector we are employed in.

In this regard, I was gobsmacked and flabbergasted when a circular recently went out to heads of ministries rightly enjoining a freeze on creation of new posts and filling of existing vacancies, some trade union leaders, blissfully cut off from the economic state of emergency we are mired in, found it appropriate to protest! I’ll wager my bottom cent that these same unionists will demand publication and backdated implementation of the PRB report because it was an electoral promise and therefore their entitlement! Never mind that unemployment at the national level, understand in the private sector, will top nearly 20% according to IMF forecasts!

Prime Minister, as a barrister and a seasoned politician, I am confident that by now you will have grasped what I am driving at. There are nations much bigger, more powerful, much richer, economically much more diversified and resilient, more innovative, more resource-rich, in short, in every manner, shape and form, much more endowed than our puny vulnerable island homeland, when faced with severe economic adversity and downturns adopt the only logical and responsible national policy response, namely austerity.

During the Asian crisis of 1998, all of South East and East Asia pursued sustained austerity, rigorous management of public finance and economic reconstruction. As a result, when the so-called Global Financial Crisis struck in 2007/09, they were in a much better shape to weather that storm, belying the appellation ‘global’, as, in actual fact, it mostly affected the economies of the Western Hemisphere. The latter in turn, especially in Europe, wisely implemented draconian austerity measures which averted a more severe contraction than would otherwise have occurred.

Air Mauritius announced last week that it had decided to go into voluntary administration. We appreciate that politically it would have been tricky for you to have given your blessing overtly to a much needed and overdue streamlining and downsizing of a bloated, heavily indebted and moribund company. We also know that such radical action would not have been possible without your imprimatur. This is encouraging. It demonstrates rare signs of realism, determination and decisiveness on your part when the occasion calls for it (I wouldn’t say when your back is against the wall, as your ill-wishers are saying).

Will you have the same pluck and mojo to do similarly for other inefficient state-owned enterprises, for the public and for the parastatal sectors, which taken together occupy a disproportionate space in our economic landscape? However much unwelcome the novel coronavirus pandemic is, not least for the sad loss of lives and livelihoods and the other collateral human suffering it’s causing, one has to roll up one’s sleeves, confront it, combat it and conquer it but also seize the opportunity for introspection and reflection on what needs to be done here, today and tomorrow for a complete review and overhaul of an archaic and anachronistic economic substructure and infrastructure. Only then will we emerge from our current travails truly robust and resilient.

Prime Minister, it’s now or never!