allAfrica.com: Mauritius: Cassam Uteem Boosts Electoral Reform (Page 1 of 1)

The former president of the Republic launched a booklet yesterday that recaps eight years of debates on potential changes. The comprehensive booklet is free and available on line at http://electoralreformmauritius.blogspot.com. Cassam Uteem with former Justice Robert Ahnee, who was a member of the Sachs Commission on electoral reform.

In the audience, not one current MP or minister. Only former MPs, ministers, politicians and other "friends" who - fittingly - attended the launch of former president of the Republic Cassam Uteem's booklet on electoral reform in Mauritius. That's also the title of the booklet. Is this an indication of the interest current politicians take in the subject matter of the book?

If this conclusion sounds unfair, it nonetheless probably stems from the fact that it has been eight years since the country has been discussing electoral reform and that, despite former MSM-MMM government's announcements that it had the firmest of intentions to reform the electoral system, nothing has been done.

Cassam Uteem's booklet is basically a recap of politicians' disclosed intentions of changing the electoral system and includes the tricky matter of the financing of political parties. This great adventure in intention started in 2001 when a constitutional and electoral reform commission was set up to make recommendations on how best to change the system; recommendations were in gist, the addition of a degree of proportional representation (PR) to the First Past the Post (FPTP) system and the abolition of the Best Loser (BLS) system, among other things.

Former Justice Robert Ahnee, who sat on the commission together with Justice Albie Sachs from the constitutional court of South Africa and B. B Tandon, electoral commissioner of India, appealed once again to the good sense of politicians yesterday when he spoke at the function at Octave Wiehe auditorium. There is no question, he said that everybody agreed on the need to reform the electoral system - and that includes all politicians of all political parties. But "we have talked enough about it", he said, stressing that the time is now for action.

Deprived from victory

Robert Ahnee is convinced - contrarily to politicians - that the current FPTP system is inherently bad because with this system "only big parties like the Labour party, the MMM or the MSM are represented in Parliament. The problem is those parties do not represent the nation and Parliament is meant to represent the nation". With the FPTP, all governments since 1967 have had to resort to alliances to win elections. "The only exception was in 1976 when the MMM won 40% of the votes. A coalition after elections deprived the MMM of its victory", former Justice Ahnee recalled.

Ironically, politicians - who are not as critical of the FPTP as former Justice Ahnee, presumably because they have all benefited from this flawed system - are fearful of the effect of PR because they worry that PR might frustrate "the will of the people" as Prime minister Ramgoolam recently put it.

"Those who say that don't know what they are talking about. The real danger is the FPTP because opposition parties are under represented in Parliament," declared former Justice Ahnee. That's an understatement if ever there was one. In 1982 and 1995, winning coalitions got all the seats in Parliament leading to what is known as a 60-0; yet, the opposition, which got about 40% of the votes, did not gain one seat in Parliament.

The PR will hopefully right this unfairness in the system. Again, critics of the PR claim the system is too complicated for Mauritian people to understand. Robert Ahnee thinks this is insulting the Mauritian person's intelligence. "All they have to do is vote for their three preferred candidates as they are used to and then on a separate form, tick the party of their choice", explained Robert Ahnee.

Judicious choice of candidates

Which leads us to the single most important preoccupation of politicians and voters alike - adequate communal representation in the event that the BLS is done away with. Professor Raj Mathur is worried that Prime minister Ramgoolam's affirmation to the effect that "adequate representation of all communities will be ensured" might be a way of re-introducing an altered form of the BLS through the back door.

The professor - rightly so - condemned the fact that communalism was enshrined in the constitution - and in the electoral system - when the constitution makes provision for four different communities based on people's religious beliefs and racial origins. Robert Ahnee, on the other hand, is of the opinion that "we will not get rid of communalism anytime soon" and proposes that political parties continue to pick their candidates based on their ethnic origins because at least in this way, communal representation is ensured. There is one community that is substantially worried about the proposed abolition of the BLS and Robert Ahnee is of the opinion that its opinion must be taken into consideration.

Cassam Uteem, author of the booklet, somewhat agrees with this. "No responsible Mauritian citizen would today wish the perpetuation of the BLS ( ) However, one should also be able to get to grips with the underlying reassurance which the BLS offered at a specifically crucial moment of our political history and which lingered on in spite of the by and large adequate representation of the minorities ensured through the judicious choice of candidates by the major national parties."

His wish is that "undue controversy over the BLS" does not distract attention from the major thrust of the electoral reforms. This is also what the Sachs report said. Chances are that this will also be the view of the political parties. The question is: isn't that just a cop out?

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