<B>By Nicholas RAINER</B>

According to Transparency International, Mauritius is perceived as being less corrupt than last year. The operative word here being, of course, perceived. On the ground though, things look a little different. For several reasons, the whole Tianli project is an aberration. The Prime minister is effectively undermining our territorial integrity by ceding part of the country to a foreign government, and one that is not known for its social or environmental proclivities to boot.

The move is a little reminiscent of what his father did shortly before independence when he handed the Chagos archipelago to the British. The difference being that Navin Ramgoolam cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, claim to be acting in the national interest. ?For Africa, China?s involvement will create winners and losers, but currently it will too often be African individuals who win, not communities and countries?, The Economist recently reported Hafsat Abiola of the Beijing-based NGO, China-Africa Bridge, as saying. So much for democratization.

To add insult to injury, he has refused to reveal the conditions surrounding the deal. It?s hard to overstress just how disturbing such flouting of the most basic precepts of good governance is. How the government has gotten away with this, as well as the no-tender contracts for a coal-fired power plant and an incinerator, is completely beyond me. At least Zambia, which has also agreed to have a self-contained Chinese zone built on its territory, has made the deal public.

How distant the 2005 elections now seem. During the run-up to the elections, the Alliance sociale blasted the MMM-MSM government at every chance it got for its IRS concept and the social ?apartheid? it would create. Soon after coming to power, the very same Alliance sociale implemented a fast track procedure to accelerate the setting up of IRS. More worrying than the double-standards at play, this approach has other, more pernicious pitfalls. As America has recently learned at its expense, there is nothing more dangerous than to base an economy on property prices.

Another shocker is the government?s decision to allow the construction of a hotel complex on the magnificent Ile-aux-Bénitiers. Apart from its peerless natural beauty, the country has nothing in the way of natural resources. For a government to simply rent out the islet to a hotel group on a long-term basis is tantamount to privatizing our natural resources. If Mauritius truly did aim to become a Sustainable island, its 20 or so islets would be declared nature reserves. End of story.

In her seminal work The Shock Doctrine, which, as many critics agree, is perhaps one of the most influential books of the decade, Naomi Klein posits that ?a free market in consumer products can coexist with free public health care, with public school, with a large segment of the economy ? like a national oil company ? held in state hands. It?s equally possible to require corporations to pay decent wages, to respect the right of workers to form unions, and for governments to tax and redistribute wealth so that the sharp inequalities that mark the corporatist state are reduced. Markets need not be fundamentalist?.

To do that though, you need a lot of political will. And that?s one resource that is definitely in short supply.