The Bad Idea of Diaspora Getting Voting Rights
06.11.2025
The proposal for the Mauritian diaspora to get the right to vote is a bad idea. Proposals tend to remain vague. Nobody has any idea of the numbers of people involved, nor of who exactly they are referring to as “diaspora”, nor of the anti-democratic effects, let alone the political dangers.
The proposal is deeply reactionary, backward looking, even feodal, and the “diaspora” it is linked to the caste-based ideology of “kith and kin” or “blood-lines”. As a proposal, it is, in addition, irresponsible. It can be irresponsible to the point of being positively dangerous, as we will argue. The implications are clearly not thought through properly by those proposing the introduction of these extra-territorial electors. People often believe, erroneously, that they are making a fine contribution to the development of the Republic of Mauritius without studying the implications, let alone their unintended consequences.
The most unpopular MPs in Mauritian post-Independence history were the one or two that spent all their time living abroad. One such notorious one lived in Australia.
In fact, the Constitution, itself, puts sensible limits on a candidate having to have resided in Mauritius for 6 months immediately before standing, and a total of two years in aggregate. Electors usually have the right to be elected in democracies. These clauses are good, democratic measures in the present Constitution.*
Today, it is no longer just a few marginal political parties bragging about being financed by the rich amongst the diaspora that began with the late Guy Ollivry’s campaign run with the money of “diaspora” Teeren Appassamy linked to the fraud in the fraud at the MCB with NPF money**, and is now a proposal currently put forward in Bruneau Laurette and Roshi Bhadain circles. Those financed by the rich amongst the diaspora are notoriously the very same people who clamour for the right to vote of the diaspora. Campaigns are also typically run by Facebookers in the diaspora proposing the measure from safely “afar”, and getting echoed on private radio stations here. Now, the proposal has become mainstream.
Prime Minister Ramgoolam, himself, announced that he is “considering” the question of the right to vote of the diaspora. (We know his terrible decisions after “considering” the matter: in, say, abolishing people’s pensions for 5 years, and withdrawing Mauritius’ ICJ “oral submissions” against Israel for its starvation policy against the Palestinians in Gaza, and selling Diego Garcia and Chagos to the UK and the falling Trump empire the UK is tied to. Ramgoolam took the wrong decision on all three “matters”.)
So we urgently have to consider the proposal for the right to vote for the diaspora and to thrash out the arguments.
History of the Nation State and Democracy
From the time when the “nation state” was becoming hegemonic in the West over the past 250 years and then speeded up with the end of colonial empires and the decolonization process of the past 75 years, this relatively new form of “territorial sovereignty” was linked with the right to vote for those living within the fixed borders in this novel thing called the “nation state”. “Residence” and the right to vote, as a form of democratic control, go hand-in-hand. The idea is that gradually everyone got the right to vote over these 250 years on the basis that they live in that particular nation state, actually reside in that particular nation state. During decolonization and until the present, the dual processes of self-determination and territorial integrity define this new form of “sovereignty” which deviates from both blood-lines and colonial empires of previous ages during feudal times.
Logical Reason for Voting Being Linked to Residence
There is a logical, philosophical, reason for the right to vote being linked to residence. You vote in the place where you are living and where you will therefore be living with the consequences of your vote. You are not voting from afar to determine the lives of people half-a-world away. You vote in the country where you actually live the effects of your vote.
The effect of this is to decrease opportunist or adventurist voting, or any other irresponsible political actions.
Constituencies
This is confirmed by the fact that, in advanced democracies and including in the Republic of Mauritius, all those elected are elected to represent a particular “constituency”. This is proper democratic control, and it implies social control. The Republic of Mauritius is more democratic, in this way, than new South Africa, which has no constituencies. ***
De-colonization
Whether in India in 1947, Kenya in 1963 or Mauritius in 1968, when Independence finally comes to a new sovereign State, a process of defining the boundaries is often problematic (like Diego and Chagos were and still are until today), and defining the people, who will vote in the new “polity”. All the British colonizers who had been living in these countries for years, decades or even centuries, were given a choice. You can have one or the other nationality, one or the other citizenship. You choose! You cannot have both! The historical progress was confirmed that electors vote where they choose to live their lives, at the time new countries were being born in the second half of 20th Century.
The Value of One Nationality
For democratic reasons, it is probably better to have a general system of people having the citizenship of only one country. The problem of loyalty and/or political credibility, or simply being in good faith, become clear when political leaders have two nationalities and then the two countries concerned get into a serious conflict. When the State of Mauritius is in conflict with the UK over Diego Garcia and the whole of Chagos, the Prime Minister of Mauritius has more credibility if he does not have dual-citizenship. (En passant, Ramgoolam is consistently cited as having dual UK-Mauritius citizenship.) The problem applies not only to a leader, but to any elector. Having one nationality implies being able to change nationality. So, while place of birth is still the main definition of nationality, marriage and long-term residence are important ways for people to change from one nationality to another. This needs to be accompanied by a general law that every person can revert to the nationality of their place of birth. The more recent development, in Mauritius as well as elsewhere, of the State, or its politicians, literally “selling” permanent residence and even nationality to oligarchs is extremely problematic. It conjures up the image of the possible re-colonization of Mauritius. And, it is a cause of major corruption, given the inequality of the two parties in the exchange: the billionaire from abroad using his wealth to buy a new passport and the politician in the Mauritian cabinet who earns what is a pittance to the billionaire. Obviously to all living around or below the “minimum wage” the Minister’s pay is a fortune so great that they cannot even see the size of the fortune of the billionaire bribing him.
No taxation without Representation
In the past, the struggle for democratic rights has been associated not only with residence, but also with taxes. In general people who pay taxes in a place, vote there. In Mauritius, everyone residing here also pays taxes here. The diaspora pays its taxes in the country it lives in, and so it votes there, or should have that right, and more generally, should participate in the life of the city and the town and the village there. That is how human society works. Until one day, there is no “state” but something better that enshrines within it the voting rights and democratic rights of all of us on planet earth. In the meantime, we vote where we live and where we pay VAT.
What is a Nation State?
The right to vote is something one acquires through living in a “nation state”. But what is a particular “nation state”? It is a geographical, or territorial, space with defined boundaries, and it is specified human beings who live within these defined boundaries and who have democratic control over this area. Both the boundaries and the people concerned are delimited. So a State is defined by what its geographical boundaries are and who its citizens are.
When this definition is not respected, we can have the most barbarous of results.
Israel, set up in 1947 by settler violence against the Palestinians living there, has never, until today, declared its fixed boundaries. It has constantly pushed out, if not killed, the Palestinian people, who were due for Independence there in 1947 following a Referendum, and is until now expanding into Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem all occupied since 1967, and now into neighbouring countries like the Lebanon and Syria, following the stated policy of “Greater Israel” – that has no boundaries either. Its people are potentially every person of Jewish origin in the world. This gave the Jewish “diaspora”, especially the rich oligarchs living outside of Israel, an inordinate power that people have difficulty understanding. The Jewish Zionist lobby controls most Members of Congress, in the house of Representatives and the Senate, by paying for their campaigns – and thus turning democracy within the USA into something controlled to an alarming degree by a country outside of the USA’s boundaries. This has led directly to Israel having been, over 75 years, the most barbarous, long-term, rogue State the world has ever seen. This has permitted Israel, and the USA, together to perpetrate genocide in full view of the world. It is serious. It stems, in large measure, from the power untrammeled by democracy based on residence of a “diaspora”, and in particular of the rich in this “diaspora”. In Mauritius, we saw the beginnings with the Teeren Appassamy case mentioned above of such a “derive”.
Practical Difficulties are Insurmountable
In addition to being philosophically harmful, democratically retrograde, and politically dangerous, diaspora voting rights pose insurmountable practical difficulties.
Strangely, it is often the very same people, like Ramgoolam and others, who raise hysteria about “eleksyon trike” every time they lose a general election, who are also the most keen to extend voting rights to “the diaspora”.
Democratic control – so clearly determined in our Constitution to be in the hands of political parties, independent of the “state”, allowing for party agents to literally follow each elector and each ballot from the moment someone comes to vote until the end of the counting process – in the case of the diaspora voting, is literally unattainable. So that, too, would make diaspora voting a step backwards. World-wide the reliance on electronic voting has been discredited for reasons of the fear of interference, so there is no digital quick-fix either. It is really only colonizers and imperial countries that have often been forced into having voting rights for the “diaspora” precisely because these powers have military and civilian citizens controlling the countries abroad that they “settle” or “advise” or even “police”.
Conclusion
So, this is a short introduction to the debate on why we in LALIT are against voting rights for the diaspora. It follows a party “commission” on the subject in 2021. Readers can view articles on our Site in the news archive at lalitmauritius.org
LALIT
Not
* It is worth quoting from the Constitution of Mauritius for our readers:
“33. Qualifications for membership
Subject to section 34 [see below], a person shall be qualified to be elected as a member of the Assembly if, and shall not be so qualified unless, he –
(a) is a Commonwealth citizen of not less than the age of 18 years;
(b) has resided in Mauritius for a period of, or periods amounting in the aggregate to, not less than 2 years before the date of his nomination for election;
(c) has resided in Mauritius for a period of not less than 6 months immediately before that date
34. Disqualifications for membership
(1) No person shall be qualified to be elected as a member of the Assembly who –
(a) is, by virtue of his own act, under any acknowledgement of allegiance, obedience or adherence to a power or state outside the Commonwealth;
35. Tenure of office of members
(1) The seat in the Assembly of a member shall become vacant –
... (d) where he ceases to be resident in Mauritius;
(e) where, without leave of the Speaker (or, where the office of Speaker is vacant or he is for any reason unable to perform the functions of his office, the Deputy Speaker) previously obtained, he is absent from the sittings of the Assembly for a continuous period of 3 months during any session for any reason other than his being in lawful custody in Mauritius;
... (f) where any of the circumstances arise that, if he were not a member of the Assembly, would cause him to be disqualified for election thereto by virtue of section 34(1)(a), (b) ... ;”
** The fraud involved the embezzlement of Rs 880 million from the National Pension Fund accounts at the Mauritius Commercial Bank, first exposed from the 1990s, and came to Court findings in 2002. But the man has never been extradited from the UK. The beneficiary was Teeren Appassamy, who had financed Guy Ollivry’s campaign in a by-election in Rose-Hill in January 1995.
*** South Africa chose that system of extreme proportional representation because of the extreme form of communalism and racism that Apartheid had left behind. But South Africa lost the democratic advantages of voting within a constituency, where control over one’s MP is so much easier. In Mauritius, our system of THREE MPs per constituency, not just ONE, does something similar but without giving up the democratic aspects of constituencies. In LALIT, it is one of the reasons we propose FOUR MPs per constituency as a way of helping to minimize unintended consequences of doing away with the communal Best Loser System.
