by Bayano Valy – SANF 05 no 56
More than 800,000 Mauritians are eligible to vote on 3 July to elect new members of parliament who will serve for the next five years in the country’s 70-member unicameral assembly.
Sixty-two members of parliament are to be elected directly by popular vote in a system of block voting where each voter casts three ballots for three candidates from each of the 21 constituencies, including the offshore island of Rodrigues.
The remaining eight members of parliament are selected from a list of “best losers”.
Voters will have a choice of 676 candidates representing over 70 political parties and independent candidates – this is considered a record number.
Less than 10 percent of the candidates are women. There are 10 women candidates from the outgoing government alliance led by Prime Minister Paul Berenger; six from the main opposition Social Alliance (a coalition of Mauritius Labour Party and the Mauritian Social Democratic Party) whose leader is Navichandra Ramgoolam.
Another four women are running under the ticket of the newly-established Majority Party, a political party formed by women.
At the 2000 elections the ruling alliance consisting of Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM) and the Militant Socialist Movement (MSM) swept the island’s poll, winning 54 seats against six from the Social Alliance.
The outcome of the 2005 legislative election is a tough call judging by the popular support that each of the main alliances is able to attract to their rallies.
Rallies are mostly held in the evenings after close of most businesses. During the day politics is mainly directed through the media.
Chief electoral officer Mahmad Ally Dahoo told SANF that almost everything is ready, and the 299 polling stations have been prepared for the poll.
The polling stations will have a combined 1,884 polling booths.
So far over 80 electoral observers from the African Union, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the Southern African Parliamentary Forum, and the Electoral Commissions Forum of SADC countries have been accredited.
Also accredited is an unspecified number of journalists mostly from the neighbouring Indian islands of Madagascar and Seychelles, and also from Mozambique.
Observers generally agree that so far, the political landscape is propitious for calm and orderly elections in this country of 1.22 million people.
The head of the Electoral Commissions Forum, Balefi Tsie, told a press conference in the capital Port Louis that from the information the group has gathered so far “we assume that the elections will uphold the reputation of Mauritius as a mature democracy.”
Mauritius has been holding elections at regular intervals since 1968, the year of independence.
The commissions forum, which arrived on 27 June, has held meetings with political parties, civil society groups, and other stakeholders.
“This has been a clear campaign,” said Tsie, adding that “we’ve been assured that there has not been a systematic harassment of opposition parties.”
The mission’s mandate like other observer teams consists of three stages, namely pre-election, election date and post-election, after which it is expected to produce a report to be handed to the Mauritian supervisory electoral commission.
In Mauritius, the supervisory electoral commission consists of a chairperson and two to seven other members appointed by the President, acting in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister, tendered after consultations with the leader of the opposition.
The 2005 legislative poll will be held against the backdrop of the SADC principles and guidelines governing democratic elections in the region which were approved at the August 2004 SADC Summit in Grand Bay, Mauritius.
Although elections were later held in Botswana in October 2004, Namibia (November) and Mozambique (December), Zimbabwe became the first country in the region to formally implement the guidelines for its March parliamentary poll.
In its post-election statement, the SADC observer mission said the Zimbabwe parliamentary elections provided lessons that in terms of the SADC declaration could have a positive influence on elections in other countries in the region.
After Mauritius, Tanzania is scheduled to hold elections in October, while Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo are expected to hold their polls within the next two years. (SARDC)
