In order to appeal to the masses, political campaigns usually pivot around a simple message. Franklin Roosevelt?s ?New Deal?, for example, tapped deep into the American people?s pressing need for change after Herbert Hoover?s unadulterated ?laissez-faire? and the Wall Street crash in 1929 had hurled the nation into a brutal depression. As history shows, Roosevelt?s campaign was successful although the aforementioned crises considerably contributed to his victory.

Catchphrases alone do not suffice though. The BJP?s surprise loss to Congress in the last Indian elections, even though the party had campaigned heavily on the upbeat ?Shining India ?, proves that slogans must reflect the sentiments of the masses. If not, they will simply seem excruciatingly anathema and backfire in the faces of those brandishing them.

Pravind Jugnauth?s budget for 2004-2005 is laudable in that it announced changes of considerable importance without trumpeting on about it. Indeed, the minister of Finance set the tone for the coming financial year with undeniable poise and authority. He didn?t indulge in any back patting of his government or even in the oft-seen castigation of the last government?s legacy. Instead, the budget itself was the star of the evening and it chose to shine on society?s underdogs.

For a budget to please all segments of society is an impossibility. There will always be those who feel their demands have fallen on deaf ears and that this omission will have disastrous consequences for their sector and the economy in general. Their distress may well be founded.

Yet, there comes a time in the life of a country when the national morale must take precedence over the more, let?s say, tangible incentives for economic growth. The past few years have been heralded as an epoch of economic miracles and the way Mauritius niftily side-stepped an economic downturn that engulfed, first Southeast Asia, and then the rest of the world bears testimony to this.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the population felt, and rightly so, that the nectar of wealth was being tasted by only a few mouths and, what was worse, that the government was condoning this exclusiveness. Jugnauth?s budget sent out a message that everyone must and will be part of the country?s march forward. With one clean sweep, he both tempered the myriad fears that a large portion of the population was being excluded from our economic future and demonstrated a political maturity that no one really suspected until now.

There is consensus on the fact that difficult times await. There is no need to enumerate the challenges as they are reported daily in the press. However, the more we read about, for example, the slow demise of our textile and sugar industries, the more we ready ourselves for the adaptations that these changes will necessitate.

Bill Clinton defeated George Bush for the US presidency with the simple slogan, ?It?s the economy stupid?, which was ironic seeing that his adversary was a hardcore promulgator of liberal markets. Pravind Jugnauth accomplished a similar legerdemain by showing, against popular perception, that his government is genuinely concerned with the plight of the ?tidimoun?.