Elections in Mauritius Are Seldom Referendums
Vote share doesn’t matter that much in Mauritius. We instead have competitions in 21 unequal ridings and the party which grabs anything more than half of the contested seats earns the right to form government. Our first-past-the-post (FPTP) setup is a system which works and has served us really well. And that too for decades. Making it an important part of who we are. Just like progressive taxation and a high savings rates have until 2006. Important matters of the state need to be given the appropriate consideration. It’s definitely not a bad idea that we let ourselves be inspired by examples of profound thinking. Like what Feynman told us about hardware reliability of the Space Shuttle: the necessary redundancy was provided by several independent identical computer systems.
What We Don’t Want
If we want to learn about at a system that doesn’t work we just need to look at what happened in Rodrigues where the wish of the people has been frustrated with a mixed-system – something our electoral system should be immunised against. And where a bigger dose of proportional representation (PR) did not solve anything except perhaps gifting Rodrigues with one of the most ridiculous population/MP ratios in the world. 21 representatives for a population of about 42,000 puts our sister island at the undesirable 187th spot (out of 193). A ministerial committee was setup to look into the matter but it appeared to be doomed from the start.
The Duval Committee Was Going Nowhere
Essentially because of two things: the process and the PR. As far as the process goes it was like that Faugoo Committee we had a couple of years ago. I guess you recall how there was not only way too little dissent in that group but it essentially used a heavily-discredited report as a base. That report was such a complete joke that Ramgoolam took 389 days to publish it disguised as his white paper but gave us only 42 days to comment on it. It was far worse than fer lisyin vey sosis. It was more like lisyin pe eksplike kuma pu vey sosis. They did invite suggestions from the public but these were never shared back with them which is another example of dissent suppression.
