Mauritius: 1967 National Assembly election

Extracted from: "Mauritius" IN Compendium of Elections in Southern Africa (2002), edited by Tom Lodge, Denis Kadima and David Pottie, EISA, 164-165.

Polling on 7 August began quietly, and by noon, over 65% of the electorate had voted. In the afternoon, rioting broke out in Port Louis, pitching Muslims against Creoles and Chinese, but did not significantly affect the course and outcome of the election. The Commonwealth observers reported that,apart from several minor incidents, the election was conducted smoothly, without interruption or signs of serious pressure on voters. 273 557 voters - 88.9% of those who had registered - cast their vote. Labour and its allies, with 55.1% of the votes, gained 43 seats in the Assembly to the Parti Mauricien's 43.1% and 27 seats (for details see 1967 National Assembly election results).

The greatest surprise of the election was the effectiveness of party discipline. Non-existent in 1943, by 1967 party discipline had so developed that in every constituency people voted for three candidates of one party. In a constituency all three candidates of the same party had the same symbol: a cock for the PMSD [Parti Mauricien Social Démocrate], a key for the Independence Party, and a wheel for the [All-Mauritian Hindu] Congress (AMHC). The regulations required that exactly three votes be cast: voting for less or more than three candidates invalidated the whole paper. The low proportion of invalid votes cast - 1.78% - indicated that the voters had understood what was required of them.

In the sense that voters chose to vote for members of their party, no matter what the candidate's community, the voting was non-communal: Hindus, however, voted exclusively for Labour, knowing that if there was a Muslim or Creole candidate on the list, still it was the party of the Hindus. In the same way the Chinese and Franco-Mauritians voted for PMSD Hindu and Muslim candidates. The Creoles voted fairly solidly for the PMSD; only the Muslim vote was divided.

According to the Commonwealth observers, the press was "very clearly unrestricted" while the allocation of radio and television time by the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation was agreed upon by only the two major parties. They also speak of the "laudable spirit of compromise" shown by candidates when a dispute arose on polling date over the timing of final television programmes.