What she hopes is that electors will be intelligent enough not to vote only for one alliance («vote bloc»). She hopes that they will make room for women on the 3rd of July. Because, if she has finally decided to start active politics, create a party and stand as a candidate in Port-Louis Maritime, Port-Louis Est, it is precisely to make sure there will be a greater number of women in Parliament as from 2005. Even if this is her first candidature for general elections, Paula Atchia has nevertheless always been involved with social concerns at a certain level. In the seventies, she joined Cecil Wiehe and Sam Lauthan to open the first centre to help drug users in Curepipe. She was also one of the founders of a centre for over-sixties. In 1976, she even took her first steps in politics as she set up the Union Démocratique Mauricienne and the Groupement Curepipien which went for municipal elections at the time. Paula Atchia is Anglo-Indian but feels “100% Mauritian”. As such, she wants to help the country move forward. With her sincere and stubborn personality, Paula Atchia will certainly manage to make mentalities evolve in her constituency as she is always on the road discussing with potential electors.

She has all the most difficult but most laudable political struggles to her credit. Lindsay Collen is one of these apparently shy women who has a lot to offer. Two of her biggest struggles together with her party include the fight to have more women in the national assembly and her hard-hitting campaign against communalism.

As for the first issue, Lalit has striven to present the same number of men and women for the general elections. This supports the party’s very ideology. As to try and make politics less ethnically communal, the party decided to draw lots when they had to declare the ethnic communities of each candidate on the nomination papers. This was a way of sending a strong signal to political leaders to show them how absurd the best loser system was in a democratic country. She is working for a more democratic Mauritian society.

This South African-born woman has more than one string to her bow. She is also a famous and much appreciated writer and has even received prizes for her books twice.

She has written several novels in English and Creole on themes close to her heart. She has also been involved in the quest for the recognition of Creole in schools and society in general.