Electoral Reform: The Tamil Duty, Dignity, Discipline Collective Proposes the "62+4+6+10" Model

Tamil Duty, Dignity, Discipline (T3D), a collective claiming to represent Tamil civil society organizations in Mauritius, submitted its electoral reform proposals to the government on Thursday as part of the ongoing national consultation. This 45-page document focuses on the political representation of "small, geographically dispersed communities," which T3D believes are insufficiently considered by the current system.

According to the collective, the current voting system leads to a "structural erasure" of certain communities, whose presence in Parliament relies more on political alliances than on institutional guarantees. T3D particularly highlights the limitations of the Best Loser System (BLS), which groups various ethnolinguistic identities into broad categories, forcing some communities to compete for a limited number of corrective seats.

Here are T3D's proposals:

1. Maintain the FPTP System
   Retain the single-member plurality voting system (First-Past-the-Post).
   Maintain 62 directly elected seats in constituencies.
   No changes to the FPTP deputy designation process.

2. Addition of Corrective Seats (up to 20)
   Introduction of a corrective layer without questioning FPTP results.
   Overall model: 62 + 4 + 6 + 10.

3. Block 1 – Best Loser System (BLS) - 4 Seats
   Retain four BLS seats.
   A transitional measure to ensure constitutional continuity.
   The BLS is presented as a temporary mechanism expected to evolve.

4. Block 2 – Geographically Dispersed Communities (6 Seats)
   Allocation of six corrective seats (two for each recognized community).
   Seats assigned to the best-placed unelected candidates.
   Condition: must have received at least 5% of the votes in their constituency.
   Goal: to guarantee a minimum presence in Parliament without demographic quotas.

5. Block 3 – Proportional Representation (10 Seats)
   Introduction of up to ten proportional representation seats.
   Eligibility reserved for parties obtaining at least 10% of the national vote.
   Seat allocation based on unelected candidates from the FPTP vote.
   No pre-established separate list.

6. Fundamental Principles
   Priority for qualitative representation rather than strictly demographic.
   Institutional recognition of communities without community census.
   Refusal of any new enumeration based on a census.

7. Integrated Guarantees
   Non-distortion rule: corrective seats cannot alter the outcome of the FPTP.
   Voluntary self-declaration of candidates regarding their community affiliation.
   40% gender representation quota across all candidates.
   No new census required.

"The adjustable model 62+4+6+10 proposed respects the historical agreement and retains it only to the extent necessary for stability and continuity," states the Tamil Duty, Dignity, Discipline collective.

"At the same time, it recognizes that the current architecture of the Best Loser System raises legitimate concerns of arbitrariness and establishes a clear pathway towards inclusion, through transparent guarantees and qualitative representation, without resorting to outdated community arithmetic based on the census."

Tamil Duty, Dignity, Discipline (T3D) also includes the Anna Foundation, the Tamil Chambers Women Empowerment Network (TCWEN), and members of the Tamil civil society. The collective asserts that it acts with the conviction that "the well-being of the Republic as a whole, in all its components, cannot be pursued in isolation, without the dignity and inclusion of each community."