MAURITIUS TOURISM MINISTER RESIGNS FROM GOVERNMENT
(Posted 20th December 2016)
There was apparently no pleasure left at all for Deputy Prime Minister Xavier-Luc Duval, who also held the portfolio of Tourism in the government of Mauritius, when he resigned from his post yesterday and walked out of the ruling coalition with 10 other of his party’s members. With him did two other ministers, two parliamentary Principal Secretaries and the Deputy Speaker of Parliament leave their positions.
Whatever been Duval had in his bonnet to trigger this drastic action, it leaves Mauritius without a substantive Minister for Tourism and has also stripped the Vanilla Island Organization of its President, not that Duval was particularly fond of working within a regional framework.
It remains to be seen how the Mauritius Prime Minister will react in coming days and who will be appointed as new tourism minister to lead a struggling sector back to its former glory days as undisputed leader among the Indian Ocean islands vis a vis tourism arrivals.
Bad politics are the bane of tourism, not just on the African mainland but even on some of the islands of the Indian Ocean. Political peace and stability is needed to propel the tourism industry forward, not negative infighting opening the flood gates for street mobs and bad publicity in global media which then keeps the tourists away.
