We have another 30 days or so to go with this drama festival that our Mauritian politics has turned into. However, amidst the daily slinging mud to the opponents, the bouts of inciting social-cultural exclusion and the continuous obvious disregard of any sorts of equality and fairness expected during an electoral campaign, I think that we are all forgetting the obvious:
We are forgetting that, in this day and age, citizens of Mauritius living abroad are still not allowed to vote.
To refresh our brain cells, our right to vote, as Mauritian Citizen, is a fundamental principle enshrined in the Constitution.
Section 44 of our constitution provides that:
“1. Any person who is registered as an elector in a constituency shall be entitled to vote in such manner as may be prescribed at any election for that constituency unless he is prohibited from so voting by any law in force in Mauritius because:
(a) he is a returning officer; or
(b) he has been concerned in any offence connected with elections:
Provided that no such person shall be entitled so to vote if on the date prescribed for polling he is in lawful custody or (except in so far as may otherwise be prescribed) he is for any other reason unable to attend in person at the place and time prescribed for polling.
- No person shall vote at any election for any constituency who is not registered as an elector in that constituency.”
And so the law is clear, if you are not registered as an elector in a particular constituency, you cannot vote at any election for any constituency. If you do not feature on the electoral list, you cannot vote. Most people would be saying that this seems fair as the person is not physically in Mauritius. But at this point, another question that begs to be asked is: Can a Mauritian citizen who lives abroad, vote by proxy? Our law certainly has a section dedicated to it but it fails miserably to its expectation. The voting by proxy is only applicable to certain situations which are as follows:
“ (a) any member of the Police, as defined in the Police Act, and any election officer, certified in writing by the Commissioner of Police or the returning officer, as the case may be, to be engaged in the performance of duties at the date of any election held the provisions of these regulations;
(b) any service elector or any elector, other than a service elector, who is –
(i) serving as Ambassador, High Commissioner or other principal representative of Mauritius abroad; or
(ii) a public officer performing duties on behalf of the Government of Mauritius under a person specified in sub-paragraph (i); or
(iii) a member of the family of a person specified in sub-paragraph (i) or (ii) and forms part of his household abroad;
(c) any candidate duly nominated for election;
(d) any public officer who is an elector in Rodrigues and who is serving in the island of Mauritius; and
(e) any public officer who is an elector in any constituency in the Island of Mauritius and who is serving in Rodrigues.”
As such, we can see that Mauritian citizens abroad cannot exercise their right to vote and not even by proxy. At to date, there are around 350,000 Mauritian citizens living in different parts of the world and this number is on the rise. Have we not reached the point where the right to vote should be extended to them too? Our leaders are valiantly talking about social inclusion in all their political manifestos and yet we are still unable to include our own citizens abroad. Some of you may argue that these Mauritians abroad did choose to leave their country and hence, as goes the expression: ‘’you snooze, you lose’’. However, these people are still not only holders of their Mauritian passports but also of their Mauritian roots.
Wouldn’t it be better if Mauritius moved in the right direction and entertained extending the right to vote to its citizens living abroad? This could be done via an extension of the proxy voting. There would certainly be ethical issues surrounding the modalities that would need to be addressed but this could be the first step into a modern electoral system that we need. By giving a right to vote to citizens abroad, the country would maybe see a shift in the brain drain situation for it is providing for an unprecedented inclusion in the electoral process. Giving the people the power to choose their future and hopefully tackle the issues which made them leave in the first place should be on our potential new government’s priority list. After all, isn’t a government of the people, for the people and by the people?
A right to vote, to participate in the choice of the government that best represents us, is essential to everyone’s feeling of belongingness to the country: So let’s not forget to tell all the Mauritian citizens abroad that we have not forgotten about them.
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