One cannot miss the election in Mauritius. One issue on which all parties find common cause is visual representation. They all conspire to transform the whole country into a multicoloured plasticfest. From one electric pole to a protruding metal beam on a building, hang the ugly plastic streamers, bearing the colour of the different parties. Everyday, rallies and public meetings are held in the different constituencies. Very often, partisans are bussed from one town to the next to boost numbers. Food is served, drink flows. Then, there are the gifts : mobile phones replacing pressure cookers as objects of persuasion. On top of all that, there is also the once-offs, the musical event for young people or the convivial gathering catering for the elders. Such lavish celebrations are very costly.

Money, indeed, has become as important as the credibility of the candidate in winning the votes of the population. A good publicity campaign can transform any dull, ‘intellectually limited’ and incompetent candidate into a charismatic, witty and confident future minister. Witness the success of Silvio Berlusconi in Italy. Backed by his media empire, he transformed himself from a former prime minister, under whose leadership a government collapsed amid accusations of corruption and conflicts of interests, into a candidate who wiped out a bickering left to take the prime ministership.

<B>Investing in the publicity machine</B>

With the right amount of money and some disarray in the opposition, everything is possible. Would anyone, have thought that Navin Ramgoolam would have made such a resurgence after his calamitous rule of the country from 1995 to 2000 and two very unspectacular stints as leader of the opposition. But he has benefited from the unpopularity of the government and a good publicity campaign.

Another salient event of the present campaign and which has created much palaver among the political classes concerns the matter of surveys. Surveys form an integral part of electoral campaigns. Strangely, the contestants were only prepared to believe the ones that they sponsored themselves. Even pollsters have become partisan according to our paranoid candidates, prompting the prime minister to issue a warning against fraudulent polls. However, aside from the nature of the discord, the parties themselves avail of the services of pollsters for their own campaign. The use of polls is an integral part of electoral strategy, and political parties use them to fine tune their campaigns. In Ireland, for example, the senior partner in the ruling coalition (Fianna Fail) spent €250 000 during the local and European elections last year. The main opposition party splashed out €90 000. In the 2002 general elections, Fianna Fail outspent its rival by a factor of eight on market research.

But the buck does not stop here. An election campaign is a massive investment. In fact, in Ireland, the parties receive state funding, though they are not allowed to use this to campaign during an election. However, they can bypass this law by spending on such vital enterprises as market research. Of the €4.4 million that the tax-payers handed to them, Fianna Fail used €2.8 million last year. This is on top of private donations and fundraising that they independently carried out. In America, the sums of money spent in elections have reached dizzying heights. Irish expenditures look like small change compared to the dollar’s role on the other side of the Atlantic. Last year’s presidential election in America broke the billion dollar mark, almost double the sum spent in 2000.

<B>Subverting democracy</B>

However, the key question is whether the role of money is subverting the democratic process. In the US, the most extreme case, there has been a degree of correlation between the amounts spent and the winner of the presidential race. The two Bush victories owed a lot to his campaign’s abilities to raise funds. Due to laws, which limit political donations to $1000 per head to one particular candidate, the candidates have developed innovative ways to amass campaign money. The Bush campaign devised a system that built a hierarchy of donors. At the top of the pyramid are the pioneers, raising over $100 000 through gala dinners etc. Microsoft can count on two such fundraisers, and over 100 staff attended a Bush fundraising before the elections last year. It must be noted that Bush had promised in 1999, that were he to be elected, he would end the antitrust trial that was then being conducted against the company at the time.

Money equals parliamentary seats</B>