Last Tango in Rodrigues January 2, 2007 Next to the plight of the besieged Palestinians, unspeakable inhumanity in Papua, living-nightmare in Iraq, ethnic-cleansing in Dafur to bring up Rodrigues recent election is a bit like farting in church. But, I guess a toothache, to the one on the end of it, is as important as the whole of Pompeii being encased in volcanic ash. On December 10, 2006, Rodrigues had an election or hatchet job, depending on who you talk to. Five months ago, following the defection of two OPR [Organisation du peuple Rodriguais] commissioners, the then opposition party of MR [Mouvement Rodriguais] suddenly found itself with a majority in the Assembly. Pre-empting a motion of no confidence, OPR commissioners resigned en bloc. Consequently, MR formed an interim government, which was later elected in its own right. Let me describe step by odd step, how this was played out. It all began with the 2002 How to Fix a Broken Relationship decision, to load Rodrigues with a proportional electoral system. To this end, the Political Intelligentsia, hmm, (excuse the oxymoron) commissioned experts and, an experimental system of FPTP [first-past-the-post] hybridized with party-list PR [proportional representation] was eventually concocted. By and large, proportional systems are intended to give minority groups a degree of representation in the government. But, in the context of Rodrigues homogeneous population and its handful of seats, our model though well-intentioned, was unsuitable. In the meantime, it inadvertently affords the parties the option of burying their less popular candidates in the party list, thereby making them less accountable to the electorate. As a potential future template for Mauritius, the proportional received the lepers welcome. Even so it was considered good-enough for Rodrigues. Thus, our people were enlisted to be its guinea pigs.