Botswana’s opposition parties stand a better chance of winning elections through the current first past the post system as opposed to proportional representation Writes OLIVER MODISE
Do you want a clear view of Botswana’s politics? Get a St Louis lager.
Whether you are trying to predict who will win the next elections or analyze the problems besieging Botswana’s opposition parties, just pull a bar stool, order your beer then bring up the subject and watch what happens.
It was in one of those drinking spots, where beer bought through a rectangular hole on the red Coca Cola caravan stalls at the Sweets Flats is quaffed from cans, that a young lager lout clearly nine sheets to the wind put down his can of St Louis beer and tried to explain why opposition parties will not win the next elections.
In no time, the paved area outside the stall, that doubles as an open air lounge, a car parking lot and a urinal, was flaring with a commotion of drunken voices as every one tried to push views edgewise about what is ailing Botswana’s opposition politics.
Some talked about “the greed of comrades” others about the failure of opposition parties to unite. The lager louts looking at Botswana’s political issues over beer cans seem to have a better view than the rest of Batswana, who blame the opposition losses on the electoral system and lack of campaign funding.
This is what emerges from the argument posed by Professors John Holm and Staffan Darnolf in their academic paper titled “democracy without credible opposition ÔÇô The case of Botswana.”
For sometime now, local newsrooms and freedom squares have been abuzz with the protracted campaign for proportional representation. The official opposition, Botswana National Front (BNF) made electoral reform, especially proportional representation (PR), one of its priority issues during the 1994 campaign. In 1989 and 1994, the BNF leaders threatened to boycott the elections, arguing that the country’s system of first past the post was yielding the opposition a smaller proportion of the seats in parliament than the percentage of votes it obtained. The Botswana Peoples Party and Botswana Peoples Union joined the BNF in producing a joint paper on the need to reform Botswana’s electoral system. The country’s major newspapers picked up the theme and distributed it to the literate population.
“Whether switching to PR would increase the chances that Botswana’s opposition parties could triumph over the BDP is a good question. For instance, if all the opposition parties had formed an election coalition, they could have gained as much as four more seats i.e. 17 seats which would have rendered their proportion of parliamentary seats only three percent short of the proportion of votes they won. It is possible that with relatively small shifts to the opposition in four districts (maybe as few as two thousand votes) the opposition could have won the majority of seats under” the first past the post system” argues Holm and Darnolf.
They point out that under the proposed system of proportional representation, the opposition would have to reach fifty percent plus one vote of the popular total in order to control parliament. This is one of the hallmarks of the first past the post electoral system: the opposition can gain a majority of the seats in parliament but not win a majority of the popular vote. It was this possibility that allowed the Nationalist Party to come to power in South Africa in 1948.
“The opposition in Botswana could win by similar means at some future date.” Holm and Darnolf illustrate their argument further by pointing out that, “In every election, the ruling BDP garners huge majorities, sometimes as much as ninety percent in parts of the Bamangwato heartland. On the other hand, the BNF wins most of its seats in districts where its majority are consistently less than 10 percent. In short, the BDP wastes many of its vote majorities while the BNF are much more economic being sometimes one or two percent.”
The report further points out, “The only explanation for the opposition’s preference for PR is that its leaders realize they cannot form the necessary electoral coalition to win under the first past the post electoral system. Thus the next best option is to assure that all their popular vote pays off in seats, as occurs under PR.
The paper dismisses the argument by opposition politicians that Botswana’s electoral system is holding them back from winning the elections.
The paper also dismisses that unequal funding of political parties is holding the opposition back. “While the BDP has maintained a substantial lead over the BNF in fundraising, the fact remains that the BNF has been able to increase its portion of the vote. In part, this is because campaigning is relatively inexpensive in Botswana. It depends, for the most part, on face-to face activities. Success in this context depends more on increasing the number of local supporters than marshalling more money. The paper further points out that opposition leaders only delude themselves by arguing that they are disadvantaged by undemocratic structures such as lack of campaign funding, limitations and government media bias. “Until opposition party leaders deal with their internal weaknesses, Botswana will operate as a de facto one party democracy.” The paper lists the major internal problems that have held back Botswana’s opposition parties as: Poor organization, failure in coalition building and ideological irrelevance. “These weaknesses have left the opposition parties unable to mount a serious challenge to the ruling BDP.
“In politics, organization is the basis for accumulating power. The BDP leadership, led by its Secretary General, Daniel Kwelagobe, has, for all these years, recognized this truth. The party has assiduously tended to important party house keeping such as voter mobilization (not only registration and turnout but constituency concerns), conflict resolution among opposing wings of the party, and leadership rotation to acquire new blood. With regard to geographic coverage, the BDP has continually maintained an organization in all parts of the country, even where it has little chance of winning. The BPP has never expanded much beyond the initial support its first leader, Phillip Matante, developed among his Kalanga people in the Northeast part of the country. The BIP has never had an organizational capacity outside of the Bayeyi people. The BNF, while increasing its popular support over the years, has remained largely urban based, as is the case with its BCP offspring. Most of the BNF growth has come from the urbanization process. It has not, with a few notable exceptions such as Bangwaketse and the Kgatleng, reached out to the rural areas.
The result of such narrow bases of support is that opposition parties cannot, on their own, wage any sort of serious national campaign and thus be a credible opposition. To survive, political parties must recruit effective candidates and campaign for their election.
While the BDP has been effective in building broad based ethnic coalitions bringing Bamangwato together with other Tswana and non Tswana speaking groups, opposition parties, on the other hand, have never committed themselves wholeheartedly to a strategy of coalition building for purposes of winning elections. “This is not to say that coalition building has not been attempted. Rather, the opposition parties have not been willing to make the hard choices required,” states the report.
“Negotiations among opposition parties in Botswana to form an electoral alliance have been a recurring part of the election process; however, none have reached the point where a viable joint campaign has been launched. There are a number of reasons for this. The leaders of BNF believe that it is better to build for its own eventual political victory rather than attempt to win in concert with other opposition parties. They want both total independence and total control over any coalition that is formed. The other parties, most of which are former BNF members, are not about to submit to BNF domination. Also pragmatic activists within the opposition, particularly in the BNF, are constantly being challenged by party hardliners. The latter are so unbending that the pragmatists fear making a serious inter-party coalition proposal because they fear it will split the party. Further complicating things, the opposition parties lack any significant common ground in terms of policy objectives. All the parties can agree on is that they would like to end the BDP’s rule.”
The paper points out another problem with the official opposition, BNF. “While the BDP has prided itself in its pragmatism, the BNF has emphasized the ideological basis of its policies and organization.
