The PMSD has long stuck to its guns over the Best Loser System (BLS), with some of its members such as Kushal Lobine not hesitating to say that they are prepared to bring back the communal census if need be. The PMSD is not opening this Pandora’s box on a whim. In fact, their position is putting into sharp focus the amateurish handling of the BLS question and just how sooner, rather than later, the state will have to make a choice.

The roots of the problem go back to 1983. In a fit of radicalism, the MMM-PSM government of the time decided to abolish the communal census, which counted the population according to the ‘four communities’ in the constitution. That meant that the 1972 census was the last one to record ‘community’. But they stopped there and did not follow through on reforming the electoral system itself, nor did they know what to do with the BLS that relied upon the communal census in allocating seats to parliament. This halfway-house meant that we are stuck in the ludicrous situation of the BLS seats being determined in every election using data from a 48-year-old census!

In the meantime, the debate over the BLS itself has been shrouded by illogic. Instead of viewing it as part of a larger reform, it was considered as an isolated evil, putting those who see it as useful on the defensive and making it all that much harder to solve this conundrum. The result is a greater political reluctance to address the question, complicating efforts for general electoral reform as well. In 2001, although the Sachs commission found the BLS to be the most detested bit of the electoral system, it was given a brief by the then-MMM/MSM government not to propose its abolition. In 2005, that government went further and tried to make it more palatable by introducing a bill to include women as a BLS category as well. The bill did not survive long. In effect, the government wanted to have it both ways: it did not want to get rid of the BLS, but did not want to bring back the communal census that would allow the BLS to properly function, and keep it properly representative, either. This is the status quo we are in.

This contradiction was addressed head on by the UNHRC judgement in 2012 that included a proposal to re-introduce the communal census to allow the BLS to function properly. This was ruled out by the Labour Party and the MMM and, instead, what came about was an appropriately mediocre solution: a ‘mini-amendment’ that would allow people not to declare their community but in all essentials keep the BLS untouched. The contradiction highlighted by the UNHRC was blissfully ignored and the ad-hoc mini-amendment expired after the 2014 election, bringing us back to square one.

The proposal coming from the PMSD is not an aberration; rather, it’s an indication that Mauritius must choose either one of two roads: if the BLS is to be kept, logic dictates (as the UNHCR pointed out) to bring back the communal census and all its ills. Or if the BLS has to be done away with, half-way measures will not work. It has to be part of a much larger project of electoral reform. The status quo is coming apart at the seams and is getting more difficult to sustain, either politically or by simple logic. This is the choice facing the country.

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