In his New Year’s message, the Prime Minister invites all Mauritians to partake in a dispassionate debate on the Electoral Reform Report penned by Professors Carcassonne, Bogdanor and Vilanova. Just as we welcome every
New Year with trepidation, the same can be said for any electoral reform.

The main objection voiced against the change from a First Past the Post (FPTP) election of 3 candidates in 20 constituencies to a pure Proportional Representation (PR) in 10-12 constituencies, each with between 4 to 7 elects, is the fact that the “ranking” of the candidates is transferred from the voters to the party leaders.  Is there merit in this objection?

Let’s take a football analogy. By and large, fan support centres on teams rather than on individual players. Team composition is decided by the coach and his assistants. The same is true in political parties. The party leader, perhaps advised by a committee, chooses the candidates after a thorough scrutiny of the alignment of their beliefs with the party line.

I reckon that we have been used to the option of vote panachage in our system. Mauritius is a rare democracy where such an option exists. It certainly does not exist in countries with single-elect constituencies (e.g. UK, India, France, etc) or with any form of PR (e.g. South Africa, Germany, etc).

Even with panachage, a 3-0 score was recorded in 160 out of the 200 outcomes at the constituency level in the past 10 general elections held between 1967 and 2010. Thus, the “ranking” of the candidates was effectively performed by the voters only 20% of the time!

This statistic therefore puts little weight to the argument that voters “rank” candidates. Voting is done “en bloc” or according to party support 80% of the time rather than on the “individuality” of the candidates. Switching from FPTP to PR therefore does not entail a major “loss” going by past voting patterns.

Rather, we should look at the gain in switching to PR. With the number of elects more or less aligned to the share of votes, we will get elects from more than one party. This will definitely bring about diversity in representation that the vote panachage in the current FPTP system has mostly failed to deliver.

I understand the perception of the “tyranny” of the party leader in choosing and ranking the candidates. If this is not done judiciously, adverse reaction by voters can always bring down the party leader akin to football coaches being demoted when fans boo loudly in stadiums.

Our job as stakeholders is to weigh the pros and cons in every change. I’m ready for change for the better of our country. Are you?

Professor SINGFAT CHU