Mauritius: General election of December 1995

Extracted from: "Mauritius" IN Compendium of Elections in Southern Africa (2002), edited by Tom Lodge, Denis Kadima and David Pottie, EISA, 172-173.

When Prime Minister Jugnauth lost a vote of confidence over a language issue that required an amendment to the constitution, he dissolved parliament on 16 November 1995 and called a snap election for 20 December. Candidates had to be nominated by 4 December, and the campaign was officially opened on 5 December. A record 506 candidates entered the fray in which some 42 parties and independents participated.

A landslide victory for the opposition ended Jugnauth's rule as Prime Minister which had lasted since 1983 (see 1995 National Assembly election results for more detail). The Labour Party (MLP)-MMM [Mouvement Militant Mauricien] alliance captured all 60 of the directly elected seats on the island of Mauritius with only 63.7% of the poll, representing a mere 51.1% of the total electorate [The two seats on the island of Rodeguas went to l'Organisation du Peuple de Rodrigues (OPR)]. The MSM-RMM alliance obtained 19.3% of the votes cast or the support of 15.4% of the total electorate, but even under the best-loser system it found itself without a single seat in the National Assembly. (The RMM = Renouveau Militant Mauricien, was the name adopted by a substantial part of the MMM led by Dr Prem Nababsing after Bérenger had broken away from it in 1993 and retained the right to the name of MMM [MSM = Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien]).

Only four best-loser seats were allocated and went to small parties with little national influence - two to the Mouvement Ridriguais in Rodrigues island and the other two respectively to the Hizbullah Party and the Parti Gaëtan Duval (PGD, formerly the PMSD). The best-loser system clearly encourages communal politics. A close analysis of voting patterns reveals that people voted largely according to communal divisions. The Islamist Hizbullah Party, one of the newer parties, had exploited the voting system by appealing to a very narrow section of the population and managed to secure a best-loser seat.

The crushing defeat of the MSM-RMM alliance was partly due to the practice of communal politics; both parties were headed by Hindus and therefore failed to attract non-Hindu supporters. The vast majority of Creoles and the Muslims voted for the LP-MMM alliance, while the Hindu voters were split between the two opposing political camps. Another reason was that voters, even though they acknowledged the economic progress made under successive Jugnauth governments, apparently wanted change for the sake of change.