Referring to the election petitions, Paul Bérenger said that he had discussed the issue of electronic voting with Navin Ramgoolam. As such, both L’Espoir platform and the PTr are totally opposed to electronic voting. Committee, set up by L’Espoir and chaired by Me Antoine Domingue, believes that it allows and facilitates fraud. In addition, L’Espoir has set up a second committee to look at electoral procedures. Paul Berenger maintains that this form of voting system has been rejected in Germany.
Regarding the unity of the Opposition, Paul Bérenger said that Navin Ramgoolam’s state of health meant that he was forced to postpone the trial of his own election petition. As a result, their second meeting must also be postponed.
Duval: « We are heading towards two Mauritius »
The leaders of the L’Espoir platform met the press this morning. Xavier-Luc Duval spoke about the impoverishment of the population. Quoting the commerce minister, Soodesh Callichurn, he said “that this year, the country will witness a massive increase in prices.” The problem, he said, is that instead of taking corrective measures to recapitalise the Bank of Mauritius and have an appreciation of the rupee, the “only solution” for the government “is the devaluation of the rupee“. According to Xavier-Luc Duval, “we are heading towards two Mauritius, is one which will suffer a lot even though they are hard-working while the other will benefit from the economic situation because it makes its transactions in foreign currencies“. He further stated that this explains why there is general impoverishment on one hand and the importation of McLaren cars on the other hand. He said it is clear that Mauritius is no longer a high-income country and in the coming weeks, there will be more increases which will affect the construction sector. “The population will shake with the price increases,” he said. He also claimed that the official inflation figure is 7.4% when the real figure is 10%.
Duval denounces a series of mistakes
Xavier-Luc Duval also took an interest in tourism, stating that there have been a series of mistakes, including the vaccination bubble, which took the Delta variant to Mauritius and several missteps concerning the Omicron variant. For him, the figure of 40,028 tourists in January represents 29% of the average and is far from the 650,000 predicted by the Minister for June 2022. According to him, “we will have about 400,000 tourists”. He is of the opinion that if the government does not know what to do, they should resign and call for the general elections.
Bérenger: “A lot of confusion and bluffing about the trip to Chagos”
During the press conference held in the morning Saturday 12 by the l’Espoir platform, the MMM leader stated that there is a lot of confusion around the scientific trip to the Chagos. “There is a lot of bluffing and a serious lack of information,” he said. He echoed the words of Philippe Sands, Mauritius’ British lawyer on the subject, to say that Britain has agreed to the scientific study. He asked that the note Mauritius sent to London be published as well as Britain’s response.
Adebiro: « It’s very sad »
Paul Bérenger was very short about Jenny Adebiro’s resignation from the MMM. He said it is “very sad”.
Nando Bodha addressed the sugar issue
He stressed that the World Bank report on sugar dates from December 2020. So according to him more than 15 months in the drawer which shows how the political will to implement a possible reform of this sector is absent. He also recalled that in 2005 when he was Minister of Agriculture, he had accompanied measures and an envelope of 16 billion spread over 8 years to implement the measures. According to him it would be necessary to have a full-time minister to implement these measures.
And concerning education, he denounces the mess, especially with the testing teams. He recalls that the Alliance L’Espoir wanted the reopening of schools but with good preparation. According to him, the consequences are that children from poor families are not attending school. No start of the school year for 5-year-olds who will have to enter elementary school and the next school year will have to have twice as many students for elementary school. He wonders if there will also be resources or places for these children.
Roshi Bhadain spoke about election procedures
A committee set up by the Alliance l’Espoir will give its report. He also discussed the electoral list and the names that have been removed from the list. He also denounced the system that he describes as archaic for the counting of votes. Regarding the Kistnen case, he revealed that the victim’s mailboxes show several clues and he hopes that the investigation will follow its course.
