Constituency - No. 10 : Navin Ramgoolam catapults the Constituency in the limelight

The leader of the Labour Party, Navin Ramgoolam, is for the first time a candidate in Constituency No. 10 (Montagne Blanche / GRSE) under the banner of the L’Alliance Nationale. He was defeated in the Constituency No. 5 (Triolet / Pamplemousses) in the legislative elections of 2014 though he was elected in this same constituency five times (1991, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2010). Navin Ramgoolam is putting a lot of trust in the people of Constituency No.10 to win back his seat as Prime Minister. He roamed through the Constituency in the company of supporters before going to cast his vote. 

In his press declaration in the afternoon, Navin Ramgoolam alleged that a person encouraged voters to take a picture of their ballot with their mobile phone and after checking the three crosses of a specific party, he was paying them Rs 1,000 per ballot. “These fraudulent incidents are irritating us,” he said.   The Leader of PTr also finds it abnormal that the names of many people do not appear on the voter’s list. Another thing which he deplored was the use of bus passes by some voters to vote. “Some people have also voted in the place of others,” he adds. 

When asked about this serious allegation, the Electoral Commissioner Irfan Rahman said on Radio Plus that “no such incident has been reported.” 
Zahid Nazurally, a candidate of the L’Alliance Morisien, was present at the Ramnarain Roy Government School. As he sees it, the low voter turnout is because of intimidation. “This is undoubtedly due to the fact that this day for voting is in the middle of the week,” he declared. Zahid Nazurally hopes, however, that voters will be more numerous by the close of polls by 18h.

According to Vinay Koonjul, candidate of the MMM, everything was calm with no major incident in this Constituency. His team launched the “operation grattage” in the afternoon to reach the maximum number of voters. Regarding his other adversaries and notably Navin Ramgoolam, he believes that each candidate is on the same pedestal, as they are all starting from scratch in the constituency.  “It is true that a former prime minister might have more clout than us, but we are doing our best,” he admits. The only thing that he laments is “money politics”, which according to him, endanger our democracy.