There was little suspense on Monday 18 December for the results of the by-election in the Belle-Rose-Quatre Bornes constituency. While many observers expected a close call on the election, Arvin Boolell, from the Labour Party, led comfortably in the early stages before securing a thumping win.

Boolell ended up with 7990 votes from the 23,112 voters that headed to the polls on Sunday 17 December. Nita Juddoo, from the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM) was far behind with only 3261 votes. Roshi Bhadain, who prompted this by-election by resigning from Parliament in June this year, came in third with 2913 votes. Not far behind was Jack Bizlall, who managed 2611 votes, making him the primary force in left-wing politics in the island.

There was also a major disappointment for the Parti Mauricien Social Démocrate (PMSD) and the Mouvement Patriotique (MP). Dhanesh Maraye, from the PMSD, only came fourth with 2,177 votes even though his leader, Xavier-Luc Duval is an MP for the constituency having been elected with 20,278 votes back in 2014. As for Tania Diolle, the MP’s candidate, she seemed to go into the elections with a lot of momentum and confidence of a decent performance. However, she only managed 1,516 votes, amounting to 6.66% of the electorate.

Finally, Rezistans ek Alternativ also seemed to take a step back during this election with only 932 votes for its candidate, Kugan Parapen. The latter ran a solid campaign but arguably lost many votes to Bizlall, who shares similar left-wing ideologies. In 2014, Bizlall was in a different constituency, with Parapen scoring 6.5% of the votes back then as opposed to 4.1% for this by-election.