Against communalism of the best-loser system - Lalit Mauritius

eal) equality before the law are the results of radical political struggles involving often mass
participation of the exploited and oppressed. No doubt an impressive achievement when
contrasted with the recent reality of colonial rule and our past history of a plantation society
based on slavery and indentured labour. Still, such an achievement must not blind us to the
imperfections and their malignant consequences.
The Poison
The best loser system is such an imperfection. It is an anti-democratic poison in our
parliamentary and electoral systems. It transforms the electorate into a sum of communal
categories and the individual citizen is no more an adult with the political right to vote and
choose a political representative, but becomes, above all, a sectarian unit who will be
represented by somebody who apparently shares the same sectarian identity.
Indeed, as will be shown, it is a poison that corrupts the Constitution itself. It categorises and
divides the electorate into distinct communities. It allows candidates who are defeated at the
polls to be nominated as representatives of distinct communal categories members in the
National Assembly (on an equal basis with elected members) after complex computations by the
Electoral Commission. Worse still, it considers the candidates who are elected by citizens to be
communal representatives of distinct categories of the electorate. The political will of the
electorate is perverted.
One decisive factor in the nominations of the best losers is the communal identity of the
defeated candidate. The fellow or lady is transformed into an Honourable member and, worse,
he or she is immediately vested with the official pretension that he/she is the “representative” in
Parliament of a particular community.
It does not matter at all that the appointed member was a candidate to the elections as the
champion of a political programme and that he/she did not see himself/herself nor was he/she
necessarily perceived by the electorate as the potential representative of a particular community.
Further, once in Parliament, he/she is expected to promote the interests of the entire Mauritian
people whilst appointed, inter alia, on the basis of his/her own personal communal identity.
The poor man or woman is condemned to live a double lie. At the elections, as a candidate,
albeit a defeated one, he/she received votes from citizens. After the elections he/she is appointed
as a representative of a particular communal group and yet, he/she becomes the Honourable
Member for a particular constituency where citizens live.
The right to vote is a fundamental political right common to all citizens. It is a legal right. It has
and should have nothing to do with the communal identity of the voters nor of the candidates.
The right to elect political representatives in Parliament is being perverted into the constitutional
pretence that it is legitimate and logical to appoint members to Parliament on a communal and
divisive basis. We will show below how these appointments are made after having quantified
the number of elected members in each communal category.
It is not pleasant at all to admit, but the communal dimension of our parliamentary democracy is
very real. A few Honourable Members may not personally or politically like it. They may even
feel uneasy about it. The point, however, is precisely that individual resistance can achieve little,
if anything at all. The communal dimension of our National Assembly is systemic. It is
institutionalised:
All our Honourable Members, whether elected or nominated, become communal
representatives. No wonder then that often, so very often, they behave as such before and after
the elections, during our permanent electoral campaigns, in government or in opposition.
Well, to put it briefly, they never stop. They pause. Then they are at it again. And so on and so
forth..... We know it well when they do it and we get anxious when they overdo it, and in spite
of their perfunctory denials, they certainly know what they are doing ... and all the while they
have the gall to keep on harping that our society is “fragile”. Many politicians even believe they
are expected to look after and win support from “their own”. They view the electorate as split
into “nu bann” and “zot bann”. This is how politicians become “mountain keepers”. Sadly
enough, many manage to derive considerable pride from this communal occupation.
The communal poison injected into the National Assembly, the seat of legislative power, flows
unchecked to other spheres of government, to the civil service, to the public and to the private
sector. The first to be immediately infected is the Cabinet of Ministers, the heart of executive
power. Ministers of the nation become powerful representatives or “leaders” of distinct
communal categories or sub-categories. Unwritten and shameful “rules” dictate how many
Ministers communal categories are “entitled” to.