One persistent myth that is making a comeback is that of the role of Bangladeshi voters somehow swinging the 2019 election the MSM’s way. Here is why it makes no sense.

The beginning of the myth

One of the most persistent myths following the 2019 elections was that Bangladeshi voters somehow managed to swing the elections the MSM’s way. Today, it is making a comeback.

For all the prominence it has received today, it’s easy to forget that this myth did not formally come from any political party, but rather a series of scurrilous posts on social media. Shortly after the 2019 election, posts began popping up on social media alleging that 8,000 Bangladeshi voters had illegally voted in the election and helped hand defeat to the Labour-PMSD bloc and the MMM. Since then, the myth has been eagerly picked up by political parties; in November 2020, the leader of the Labour Party Navin Ramgoolam argued how the late MSM agent Soopramanien Kistnen was about to reveal to him how 1,200 Bangladeshis had voted on the MSM’s behalf. 1,200, not the 8,000 as social media posts had initially argued. Then in January 2021 Rama Valayden announced that 12,000 foreign nationals had illegally voted in the 2019 election and called for Mauritius to disenfranchise Commonwealth citizens residing in Mauritius. In terms of numbers, the myth just began expanding without much explanation.

These, however, were just what was being said at public meetings for mass consumption. In more serious venues, such as the courts where the opposition parties were challenging the outcome of the 2019 elections in a series of election petitions, nowhere did Bangladeshis voting illegally figure in any of the cases lodged by the opposition parties. None of their agents reported witnessing thousands of Bangladeshis voting in any of the 20 constituencies of mainland Mauritius. And in their election petitions, the opposition parties were lamenting quite the opposite: that 6,800 voters were not able to vote, not that polling stations were flooded by thousands of foreign, illegal voters. Nor did Bangladeshi voters figure anywhere in a document jointly penned by the Labour Party, the MMM, and the PMSD and submitted to election authorities in April this year regarding the conduct of elections in Mauritius. The only kind of voter fraud mentioned in that document was not Bangladeshis voting, but rather that of voters allegedly voting on behalf of deceased people.

In other words, while the myth of the Bangladeshi voter is eagerly promoted in public opinion via public meetings, in more serious settings such as courts and the electoral commissioner’s office, this myth is not mentioned at all. Strange, if the 2019 elections were determined by illegal voters from Dhaka. This is for three reasons; first, the ultimate origin of this would have to be acknowledged, not from political parties themselves but Facebook tiddle-taddle masquerading as grand politics, secondly that political parties subscribing to this theory would be hard-pressed to explain how their agents seemed to miss thousands of illegal, foreign voters flooding voting booths on election day and lastly, how regulations put in place in 2014 requiring photo ID, such as ID cards and passports to vote, were sidestepped in this massive conspiracy.

The Commonwealth voter

The sub-text of this myth is a rather xenophobic one. One that sees the Bangladeshi factory worker as a mercenary voter who is illegally selling his or her vote to the government in return for cash. This of course ignores the inconvenient fact that vote-selling is hardly a Bangladeshi monopoly. This distasteful practice is pointed out in a September 2020 report jointly authored by academics Roukaya Kasenally and Ramola Ramtohul which estimated that during the 2019 elections the cost of buying a legal Mauritian vote, “could vary between MUR 5,000 and MUR 10,000. For a whole family, the price could shoot up to MUR 100,000. Some voters were given money only after showing a picture of their vote bulletin taken on their mobile phone. But money was just one of the means used to sway a voter’s decision. Promises were made about jobs, small plots of land, or business permits in exchange for votes”. Why take the trouble of buying illegal Bangladeshi votes, when there are perfectly legal Mauritian ones up for sale?

Within the Mauritian legal and political system Commonwealth citizens are clearly distinguished from non-Commonwealth citizens. Nor is the fact that Bangladeshis can vote in Mauritian elections all that exceptional. Article 42 of the Mauritian constitution says that to vote, he or she, “must be a citizen of the Commonwealth and be at least 18 years of age and (b) have resided for a period of two years minimum”. Out of the 54 states of the Commonwealth, 16 of them allow Commonwealth citizens to vote in their elections. Mauritius can hardly be said to be an exception when 30 percent of all Commonwealth states have similar rules on their books.

What is more, Mauritius is far from the most generous when it comes to granting such voting rights. Other states such as Belize, Dominica, Jamaica, Guyana, or St. Kitts and Nevis either allow Commonwealth citizens to start voting in their elections as soon as they start residing in their country or only demand that they live in the country for a single year before exercising the franchise. Mauritius by contrast demands two years of residence. (see table 1)

Countries that allow Commonwealth citizens to vote.

What is strange about the current outcry about foreigners voting is not only that this system has been in place since independence, but that proposals have been made in the past to do away with this system. In 2002 the Sachs report proposed that; “the Commission feels that in future only Mauritian citizens should be entitled to be registered as electors and Commonwealth citizens should not be registered as electors. However, Commonwealth citizens already registered as electors at present should be allowed to continue to exercise their right to vote as long as they continue to be residents of Mauritius”. Those same parties that are today lamenting about ‘foreigners’ voting in our elections chose to do nothing about it all this time.

Why the numbers make no sense

The biggest problem with this myth is not just that it’s looking to whip up hysteria against a perfectly legal and constitutional practice that has been there since independence, nor that this distasteful campaign seems to be exclusively aired at mass public rallies rather than more serious and somber settings where evidence would be required to back it up.

The biggest problem is that the numbers just don’t lend any credence to it. During the 2019 elections where Bangladeshi voters are supposed to have swayed the elections, just a mere 838 Commonwealth voters were registered to vote. That is just 0.08 percent of the total registered voters for that election. Out of them, there were only 45 Bangladeshis registered. The biggest chunk of foreign voters by far were Indians at 535, nevertheless, the campaign has been focused on the numerically much smaller Bangladeshis. With such paltry numbers, neither (still less all foreign voters collectively) could have done anything to sway the result of the 2019 elections.

To help muddle up this obvious problem in the theory a new ‘debate’ was launched to help charge public opinion still further: if Bangladeshis could vote, why not the Mauritian diaspora? What this ‘debate’ blissfully assumed was that accommodating a handful of Bangladeshis who reside within particular constituencies, register to vote, and pay taxes to the Mauritian exchequer is in any way comparable to opening the floodgates for the hundreds of thousands within the diaspora, which would entail a dramatic rewriting of the constitution and electoral system and who do not pay taxes within the country. The Mauritian economic story is remarkable for how little its diaspora has contributed to it. But the idea was not a realistic debate, the idea was that while public anger and xenophobia were directed at the poor Bangladeshi, it would not question just how feeble and discredited the myth of the Bangladeshis stealing the 2019 elections really was.

This was, and remains, a perfect myth. In the latest registration exercise in 2023, out of the 991,327 voters that have been registered, just 1,724 are Commonwealth citizens. (see table 2) That is, just 0.17 percent of the total number of registered voters. And Bangladeshis are just 232 of them. Or put another way, Bangladeshis account for just 0.02 percent of the electorate. Hardly the numbers to win or lose within a single constituency, still less determining a national election. A myth repeated constantly does not make it any truer, particularly when there is no evidence to back it up. And it’s high time to retire this particularly ludicrous one.

Number of Commonwealth Citizens Registered to vote in Mauritius by year.