New report sounds alarm, calls Mauritius a ‘democracy in steep decline’

An alarming new report from the V-Dem (Varieties of Democracy) Institute at the University of Gothenberg in Sweden has described Mauritius as a “democracy in steep decline”.

With a worrying score of 0.39, Mauritius was thrown in the basket of three countries considered ‘top autocratizers’. These countries are El Salvador, Tunisia and Mauritius.

“This means that the process of moving away from democracy started long ago but continues to a significant degree also into 2022. Democracy seems to hang by a thread in Mauritius,” the report said.

“Mauritius – once hailed as the only liberal democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa – recently introduced several regulations that restrict the work of broadcasting companies and journalists,” it said.

According to the report, the last decade has seen the increasing power of autocratic political regimes across the world.

Further, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in 2020, “many countries scrambled to centralise power and suspend parliamentary decision-making in an attempt to manage the pandemic. Such countries used the pandemic to pass legislations that impinged on their citizens’ rights and freedoms”.

“Some countries also used the pandemic as an excuse to allow the executive in those countries to assume disproportionate power, vis-à-vis citizens.”

The report titled ‘Defiance in the Face of Autocratization’ has further asserted that “advances in global levels of democracy made over the last 35 years have been wiped out.”

The 2023 V-Dem report referred to India as “one of the worst autocratisers in the last 10 years”.

Last December, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA International) gave a similar major blow to Mauritius over its declining democracy. 

This organisation, said to be a global reference in the field of measuring democracy, noted that Mauritius was among seven countries that are going backwards in terms of democracy.

The abuse of power, it had said, indicates the fragility of democracy and calls for the need to strengthen institutions to withstand pressures, especially in times of crisis.

Source: V-Dem Institute, Democracy Report 2023