Against communalism of the best-loser system - Lalit Mauritius

mind at the time he/she wishes to represent a constituency in Parliament. To our great shame,
the First Schedule insists otherwise. The candidates are classified into four possible categories.
Its section 3 (4) extends the infamy of Section 3 (1) to the entire people of Mauritius. Here it is
in extenso :
“For the purposes of this Schedule, the population of Mauritius shall be regarded as including a
Hindu community, a Muslim community and a Sino-Mauritian community; and every person
who does not appear, from his way of life, to belong to one or other of those 3 communities
shall be regarded as belonging to the General Population, which shall itself be regarded as a
fourth Community.”
The first obvious observation to be made is devastating: when it comes to elect our Government,
our Opposition and other politicians to represent us in Parliament, the Constitution allows its
First Schedule to do away with our political responsibility, our political dignity and our
political integrity as citizens.
The representation of the people in Parliament, the choice of those who will govern the country
is deliberately and heavily polluted by communalism. We, the people, are reduced, whether we
like it or not, to beings which must perforce “belong” to one of 4 categories. Some of us are
defined in terms of our religion: Hindu or Muslim. Others in terms of the place of origin of our
putative ancestors: a Sino-Mauritian presumably comes from China. After this constitutional
massacre of the integrity of our Mauritian citizenship, what is left of us is unceremoniously
packed in the motley bag of “General Population”.
Is this acceptable in 1995? Was it ever really acceptable? Will the people still accept it in the
year 2000? Will our youth continue to tolerate the intolerable?
For how much longer will the people of Mauritius, the political parties and the Supreme Court,
the Guardian of the Constitution, tolerate and subject themselves to such dangerous political
indignities and fragmentation?
We may pause here to note that the Lalit Party is a courageous exception. It must be
commended for its philosophical and political objection to such communal classification. In
1983 and in 1987, indeed whenever it participates in elections, its candidates choose a
community from a hat (probably the safest place to handle such a concept). The 4 categories
imposed in the First schedule are written down on a piece of paper, put in a hat and the
candidates pick one out, any one, which they use to fill in their Nomination Papers.
Such a device is not a mere symbolic gesture. It certainly is more logical when contrasted with
the absurdly vague notion of “way of life” that the horrendous Section 3(4) imposes as a method
of classification upon the Judges who are given powers to determine in which communal
category a candidate is to be confined. If each of the 4 categories is supposed to have a distinct
“way of life” that can be legally defined, we may well ask what has happened to the “Mauritian
way of life” we hear a lot about. Why is it not mentioned in the First Schedule? Perhaps because
it would establish too clearly the reality of only one Mauritian electorate.
Section 5 (1) of the First Schedule confirms bluntly the purpose of the best loser system :
“in order to ensure a fair and adequate representation of each community, there shall be 8
seats in the Assembly, additional to the 62 seats for members representing constituencies.”
This purpose is supposed to be achieved by quantifying each communal category. Yet, this was
done for the last time in the census of 1972. The electorate was asked to identify itself in terms
of communal categories. In census carried out in 1982/1983 and again in 1992, the electorate
did not have to state any communal category. Candidates to elections, however, still had to
categorise themselves. Thus, the outdated figures gathered in 1972 have been used to appoint
best losers in all the general elections since 1976 onwards. They were last used in 1991, nearly
twenty years later.
Parliamentary democracy is perverted by such absurdities which compound the indignities
already mentioned. The Electoral Commission might as well use a large hat to select the best
losers. A sombrero would do. It is much less harmful and less ignoble than the communal
quantification and division of a whole nation.
The Mathematics of Perversion
We will attempt to show step by step how the Electoral Commission proceeds to nominate best
losers after a general election. We will deliberately ignore the communal categories used by the