The Prime Minister promised a winning formula for the upcoming election. Coupling the current 62 constituency and 4 Best Loser seats with an additional 14 Proportional Representation seats with at least 7 reserved for women is no winning formula.

It is simplistic poker to coerce the Opposition to voice against the proposed constitutional amendment and thereafter use it as political fodder in the upcoming elections. Mr Bérenger, you can surely field more than 7 able and willing female candidates!

The government labels its proposal ?positive discrimination?. How positive is this when men could still number 73 out of an 80-strong National Assembly?

What Mauritius needs is a bold reform, like an equal split between male and female candidates on each party list. When we went for Independence, we did not do it piecemeal. The same logic should apply to increasing the number of women MPS. Let the candidates compete against each other and let the citizens own up to their responsibilities on their representation.

Against the current backdrop of politicians being held in low esteem and the regression in social order, just imagine the breath of fresh air an influx of women would bring to our political space.

Here is a personal anecdote. My family has run a restaurant since the 1960s. Till the early 1990s, the clientele was exclusively male and this meant the occasional foul language and acts of violence. Sadly, my mum once lost a child when she was kicked in the stomach. In 1992, the business was altered to focus on food rather than on alcoholic drinks. More families and women on their own came in and the environment has become more convivial. Why am I saying this? Imagine transposing this to our current National Assembly and putting an end to the disgraceful ?macho? antics taking place there.

Women are bound to increase their presence in the National Assembly. We can now seize the opportunity to leapfrog the evolution towards equitable gender representation. In so doing, we will show that we are an enlightened nation, which has matured after 37 years of independence. Women will contribute readily and positively to our governance, just like many do at the household level. The perennial excuse of lack of quality or quantity in female candidates does not hold when we have so many women in governance, at professional and grassroots level, voicing their opinions in the media nowadays.

The winning formula for the upcoming elections will not be undermined by hollow themes like time-sharing the PM?s office or even economic democratization. Rather, it is initiatives towards nation-building by discarding the communal Best Loser Scheme and political democratization via an equitable political representation for women, which will be deemed to have a significant downstream impact on a more convivial social and moral order in Mauritius. This is what the electorate wants!

<B>Dr. Singfat CHU</B>