Africa-Press – Mauritius. The proposals for the new constitution in Mauritius contain two suggestions that are wholly bad. I refer to the proposal to retain up to 12 nominated members in the Legislative Council, and to the suggestion that Proportional Representation be adopted as the voting system.
As a colony advances to self-government, the number of nominees in the Legislative Council should lessen. This is not the case in the Mauritian proposals.
If, however, there are to be nominees, they should be appointed by the Governor after consultation with the leader of the majority party, or else represent definite scheduled interests.
I refer as a precedent to the dispatch on the Malayan Constitution from Mr Malcolm MacDonald in 1954. Neither of these alternatives is met in Mauritius.
In the particular circumstances of Mauritius, Proportional Representation is the worst possible method of voting. It will emphasize in the Legislative Council the racial and religious differences among sections of the population.
Instead of promoting national unity and racial harmony, Proportional Representation will accentuate and perpetuate racial and religious differences, to the detriment of the possible eventual emergence of a spirit of pan-Mauritian consciousness.
It is true that Mauritius has a plural society, but so have Trinidad and Malaya, and no one has ever sought to impose Proportional Representation there. If this retrograde step is accepted, Mauritius will be the only colony with such a voting system.
Running throughout the constitutional proposals and the dispatch of the Governor of Mauritius, Sir Robert Scott, is the implication that Labour representation in the Legislative Council should be weakened; and Proportional Representation as the voting system will do so.
This means that the proposals will confer sectional advantage on the minority by denying social and political justice to the majority. Your Port Louis correspondent recently referred to the Mauritius Times as a “Hindu nationalist” weekly.
May I say that it is nothing of the sort. My paper is an independent democratic weekly; any nationalism which appears therein is Mauritian nationalism.
And with reference to your own recent leading article, it is untrue to say that the Hindus are in a large majority. The Hindus numbered, at the 1952 census, some 258,000; the non-Hindus, i. e. the Muslims, General Population and Sino-Mauritians, numbered some 243,000. A majority of 15,000 in half a million cannot be construed as large.
I am, sir, yours faithfully,
Peter Ibbotson London Representative, Mauritius Times 100, Canonbie Road S. E. 23 * The Hindu majority is, in effect, large because the minorities are not likely all to combine against the majority.
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