Ban pre-election alliances?: A tough call but a much needed one!

Ban pre-election alliances?

This is a tough call for many in the political circles.

But it might be a necessary move to protect the people’s votes from astute politicians.

The country’s electoral history is rigged with broken alliances, thus broken promises.

The biggest disappointment was the breaking of the MMM-PSM alliance in March 1983.

This is an alliance that is still missed in the country thirty-five years later.

But a series of betrayal, mistrust and foreign actors playing into local politician’s hands brought the demise of the 1982 revolt.

The most recent breakup of alliances was about tarnishing the image of the other parties that were forced out of government.

Or they were about internal scuffles between the leaders of the allied parties.

They were not in the interest or about the interest of the people, not at all.

With the exception perhaps of the 2014 election alliance.

The PMSD left the alliance apparently due to the mess it created within the ministries it handled.

At least, this is the under-table version of the MSM-ML coalition.

Again, this was not about the ‘people’ or the respect of the people’s votes.

It was about personal mischiefs, leadership battles, fear of being taken over by the junior leader or the deputy PM and so on.

No one had any idea whether they were hurting the people or betraying their vote when they made their move to quit the government.

The biggest examples of what the people thought of the quitters from the alliances are the PMSD, yet again.

It left the MSM-ML-PMSD alliance Lepep, and it was trashed in the by-elections in December last year.

Another example of the trashing of quitters is the former Minister Roshi Bhadain.

A very promising political figure, Bhadain missed the turns after he played havoc within his party, the MSM.

Trying to take a short-cut – to the leadership of the party – he chose to expose the party leaders who were ahead of him.

One by one, he targeted them. Some fell along the way, but one man came back to his political will to haunt Bhadain.

It was then Minister of Finance Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo.

We know the story. The Minister fell ill, went on a gardening leave and cleared his name from a scandal.

He came back and challenged Bhadain with a ‘now I have you in my sight’ kind of statement.

With the embattled party members rallying behind Lutchmeenaraidoo, Bhadain had no other choice but leave the party.

Thus, he failed in his leadership bid.

But later he claimed he left for the betterment of the electorate that gave him the seat.

He and his party were bashed in the by-elections. We know the results and we know that it will take him a long time to recover from this.

The MMM left the government in 1983 based mostly on a purported plot by India to secure the regime of Sir Aneerood Jugnauth.

The ploy was to get Paul Berenger out of the government.

This led Berenger to quit, but not after he tried to get rid of the PSM of Harish Boodhoo one last time.

But he had his back against the wall, while some of his militant friends were bought over by the ‘occult forces‘.

Many say the split was inevitable, others say it should not have happened. Some say it was an opportunity wasted.

But many others are still reminiscing about Harish Boodhoo’s role in the breaking of the MMM-PSM regime.

The result was the disappearance of Boodhoo from local politics. He paid a heavy price.

But the country also paid a heavy price from the breaking up of the most popular alliances in history.

Most of these breakups were not done for the sake of the people or with the population in mind.

Hence, what’s the purpose of these alliances that uses the people’s vote only to destroy the voter’s hope?

The political parties should take a moral stand to ban pre-electoral alliances. They should be brave enough to fight it alone, on their own.

Whoever wins the larger number of seats would have a better chance to form a government.

Unless the other parties have the numbers to form a government if they join forces, and so on.

The question will then arise whether the people voted for such a coalition government?

That should be left to the Parliament and the Presidency.

That way, it will consolidate these institutions in their roles to secure the country’s democratic system.