A friend in England e-mailed me the other day and told me she voted Lib Dem at the recent elections in her country. I asked why. She wrote back: ?Even if I think Blair did not do too badly - though it wasn?t great, I was certainly not giving him my vote again. He needs to understand we?re not too pleased with him.? My friend thought, like the polls predicted, that Blair would probably get back to power but she thought he shouldn?t come back with an overwhelming majority.

She would not even consider voting for the Tories as she felt their campaign on immigration with the theme ?Which part of Throw them out don?t you understand?? was nauseating. Voting Lib Dem was her way of making a statement. And I suppose many people thought the same way as well because Tony Blair, third mandate prime minister though he may be, could not have failed to get the people?s message. How long he will last as prime minister we know not but Gordon Brown is probably also learning from Blair?s recent experience. So is Michael Howard as he is preparing to resign as Tory leader.

In a few weeks? time, we will be faced with the same dilemma. We all have things on our minds and we might all want to scream to the politicians and tell them not to take us for fools or even that we do not agree with their stand. And we all, to a certain extent, feel our voices will never be heard; that our only role is to cast our votes and that?s where it stops. Wrong. Even if we still have a most unfair electoral system - and some refuse to change it - the votes will still hold a message for our politicians. If they read through them and listen hard enough, they will hear the deeply-felt cry of the Mauritian people. It will be up to them to pay heed or not to pay heed.

But, if there is one thing to be learnt from the recent British polls, it is that one cannot forever suppress the voice of the people, one cannot forever refuse to listen to the insistent hum. One may try: the Constitution of the next National assembly will never reflect what the people have been trying to say as long as we keep the present first-past-the-post-system. But the truth will always come back to haunt them: if they don?t listen now, next time around might be too late. The time of reckoning comes for all of us: Blair and Howard have just had theirs.

Whatever the outcome of the elections scheduled for 3rd July, whether it is Ramgoolam or Bérenger who wins, if they don?t listen to what the people have to say - albeit clumsily so - and act accordingly, they will not know what hit them next. Politicians all too frequently think it is all about them. They tend to forget the mysticism behind the age-old adage that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God. It has always baffled many how that could be. Many say, don?t they, that the majority is always wrong: Britannia has just showed us that there is a method to this madness.