Thoughts on Electoral Reform (5)

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.

Thoughts on Electoral Reform (I)

Not sure I understand the logic of giving us only 42 days to send our submissions on electoral reform after taking 389 days -- that's nine times more -- to get the white paper out. It gets funnier when you realise that our Government is proposing nothing new. Nope. The Government is instead and essentially recommending that we adopt the January 2012 Sithanen report: something that is deeply flawed and shrinks dangerously our democracy. And which got a University of Mauritius student an ovation when he rightly said -- after hearing it from the horse's mouth -- that it doesn't solve anything.

The six weeks we have to read and comment on the report is also and evidently way too short when you notice the number of interesting articles -- of the non-TINA variety -- that appeared almost immediately in the Forum and elsewhere. I take a quick look at a few at the end of this piece.