This Sunday, October 9, marks the 92nd birthday of Gaëtan Duval. PMSD supporters were at the rendezvous at 11.00 am for a wreath laying at the tomb of the late Sir Gaetan Duval.
Sir Charles Gaëtan Duval, a fine criminal lawyer, took over the leadership of the Mauritian Social Democratic Party (PMSD) in 1967 from Jules Koenig. A charismatic leader, he was a Member of Parliament from 1960 and several times Minister under the governments of Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam and Sir Anerood Jugnauth. He was at times Minister of Foreign Affairs.
After the breakup of the MMM-PSM alliance government in 1983, Sir Gaëtan Duval was one of the architects of the blue-white-red alliance, under the leadership of Sir Anerood Jugnauth, to rebuild the country and achieve the economic miracle.
The leader of the PMSD is remembered by Mauritians as Minister of Tourism from 1967 to 1973 and from 1986 to 1988. He was undoubtedly the great architect of the tourism industry. He was the first Lord Mayor of Port Louis.
SGD enjoyed very good relations with foreign politicians and power men: Omar Bongo, Jacques Chirac, Charles Pasqua, among others.
An inveterate opponent of Mauritian independence alongside Jules Koenig, Gaëtan Duval subsequently engaged his party, which won 44% of the votes in the general elections of August 1967, in a government of national unity with the Labour Party of SSR in December 1969.
On his grave in the cemetery of St. John, Four Corners, where he is buried, it is written as an epitaph: “Do not cry, I am not dead. I am pretending.”
