As “l’express” looks back on 60 years of its own history, one of the pivotal moments in the country’s history was its transformation into a republic. Here is the story of how the vote in 1991 brought that to fruition.

1) The germ of an idea

The idea of making Mauritius a republic dates back to the 1970s. Sir Seewoosagur Ramgoolam (SSR) then mulled the idea to turn Mauritius into a republic, but he was dissuaded from any attempt by the 1977 coup in neighbouring Seychelles. Fearing that replacing a governor-general by a president would increase the risk of a similar coup in Mauritius, the republican idea was shelved until it was once again revived in 1983. This time by an alliance led by the MSM and its Prime Minister Sir Anerood Jugnauth (SAJ). 

Following his break with the MMM and the founding of the MSM, dependent upon the Labour Party and the PMSD, SAJ floated the idea of turning Mauritius into a republic once again, this time enticing Labour supporters by dangling the prospect of a new republic with him staying as Prime Minister and SSR becoming the first President of a Mauritian republic. The idea was tame enough: what the 1983 proposal envisaged was merely rebranding the governor-general as the new President, and effectively transferring powers from the old post to the new. 

From the opposition side, the MMM favoured another model; that of an empowered president who would balance power away from what was already an over-mighty Prime Minister. When SAJ presented the bill in parliament, the MMM proposed 12 amendments and presented a motion asking that a third reading on the bill be postponed, in case the bill itself was discarded for lack of the three-fourths supermajority in parliament to pass it through. However, the motion of the MMM was rejected on the government side. In the end, the MMM abstained from the vote, depriving the MSM of the numbers it needed to push the bill through. 

Within the government, senior figures from the Labour Party suspected that although the MSM had gone through the motion to present the bill, it was unwilling to compromise by handing over any more power to a presidency led by SSR. He had to make do with the post of governor-general.

2) The 1990 accord and new bill

After the failed try in 1983, the republic project had been placed on the backburner until 1990. On July 19 of that year, the MSM and the MMM officially signed an agreement for an alliance for the next general elections. According to the agreement – signed by Paul Bérenger and Prem Nababsing on behalf of the MMM, and SAJ and Karl Offman for the MSM –, after the elections, the alliance would introduce a new republic bill that would see SAJ as Prime Minister and Bérenger as first President of the republic. In case the alliance failed to win the three-fourths needed, Bérenger would become number 3 in the cabinet hierarchy, just after SAJ and Nababsing, the two parties agreeing on a 33-27 ticket split. 

Although the accord saw any legislative attempt to turn Mauritius into a republic to be taken only after it had won the next election, by November 1990, the MSM-led government had presented a new bill into parliament. But although the MSM, with the MMM supporting it from outside government, appeared a formidable machine, it struggled to come up with the numbers required to pass the bill. 

On the one hand, it had to contend with problems within the government. Vishnu Lutchmeenaraidoo – then a minister within the MSM – opposed the bill and demanded that a select committee study the bill, a demand that was backed by Gaetan Duval’s PMSD. Another figure within the government – Dinesh Ramjuttun – also opposed the bill. Another pole of opposition was the Labour Party – nominally an MSM ally within government with Sir Satcam Boolell serving as deputy Prime Minister. 

This opposition from the Labour Party was credited to Navin Ramgoolam, who was getting active in politics, but was not yet the leader of the party. According to Ramgoolam, this draft of the bill did not mention the Privy Council, raising some doubt about whether it entailed a dramatic change to the structure of the Mauritian judiciary. In an interview to l’express at the time, Ramgoolam also pointed to the example of Fiji where a republican constitution had given rise to constitutional crises, the question of Commonwealth recognition and that, in many post-colonial states, presidents “had nibbled little by little” prime ministerial prerogatives. 

Satcam Boolell explained why his party could not support this attempt to create a republic, whereas it did in 1983. “It is not that we are against a republic. From 1983 to 1990, we have become wiser. Why today have people become less enthusiastic? The reason is because it has come in the way of an electoral accord… had it come after the election, had it come before that accord, there would have been a different mood.” Boolell also said that by sharing a draft of the bill before bringing it to parliament, the MSM had breached the Official Secrets Act and he proposed a committee of experts – along the lines of what Lutchmeenaraidoo and Duval were proposing – to study the bill further.

3) The government breaks and post-1991

With the MMM backing the bill – but the opposition within its own government –, the success or failure of the bill depended on two people: the first was the speaker, Ajay Daby. As an elected MSM parliamentarian, the government expected him to automatically back the bill. However, Daby adopted a neutral stance, depriving the government of a key vote needed to secure the three-fourths majority to pass the bill. Attention then turned on Raj Virahsawmy, another MSM MP, but who had broken with the party and was sitting as an independent, founding the Tamil, Telugu, Marathi movement (TTMM) whose demand was to recognize eight official communities in Mauritius. Virahsawmy seemed to back the government, but he insisted “under protest” since the bill had been presented without any proper debate within the country. It looked like the MSM and the MMM would get the vote needed to pass the bill through – even if by a razor-thin margin. 

However, the day the bill was coming for vote in parliament, after dinner, Virahsawmy had gone to Boolell’s office along with Lutchmeenaraidoo, Duval and Ramgoolam. Virahsawmy did not show up for the vote, instead leaving parliament with the PMSD’s Alan Driver. With neither Daby nor Virahsawmy now giving their vote, the three-fourths supermajority was lacking a single vote to pass. Rather than risking the bill being defeated in a vote, parliament was adjourned for the night. The following day, the government broke apart with SAJ, firing Lutchmeenaraidoo, Boolell and Ramjuttun as ministers. That led to the remaining Labour ministers, such as Marie France Roussety, Ramesh Jeewoolall and Clarel Malherbes, also leaving government. The Labour party had broken with the government. 

To keep the government – now outnumbered by the opposition in parliament – going, and to prepare the ground for another attempt to pass another republic bill, SAJ proposed that the MMM instead come over to the government side and take up the ministries left vacant by the Labour Party. One party exited government for another to enter it. The MMM’s leader Paul Bérenger, not officially in parliament, was made the government’s advisor on nuclear disarmament. One of the first things the new governmental configuration did was to get the speaker – who was not deemed sufficiently supportive of the government on the attempt to get the bill passed – out of the way. Daby, however, refused to resign, with the MMM and the MSM coming up with a motion of no-confidence against him. It passed 50-10 and Daby’s seat as speaker was declared vacant and he was replaced by Iswardeo Seetaram – who stayed as speaker until January 1996.

The MSM-MMM combine eventually won the 1991 elections – winning 57 out of 60 elected seats, and the Labour just three. The two parties now returned to the republic bill and came up with a new draft, which looked to make Mauritius officially a republic as from March 12, 1992. The new republic would see Sir Veerasamy Ringadoo – the last governor-general – become the first President for a short while before ceding the post to Cassam Uteem. During the 1991 debates on the bill – specifically on December 9, 1991 –, the Labour Party proposed an amendment that a President be elected directly. This was something that the MMM itself was calling for in 1987, but it was rejected. It would not be until 2014 that the proposal for a directly-elected President with more powers – something the MMM wanted in 1983 – would reappear. On December 10, 1991, the bill was finally passed to make Mauritius a republic.