This overview follows the ‘As I See It’ Mmegi Column piece titled “First-Past-The-Post or Proportional Representation?” I received a number of calls from readers after the article. Spencer Mogapi, Sunday Standard sub-editor who triggered my piece republished his article, clearly an invitation for further comments on the subject. The discourse on electoral systems is topical and pertinent for the enrichment of our democratic process through exchange of opinion and it should be welcomed.
The subject of Electoral Systems has begun to engage the mind and interest of politicians, political organisations, political analysts and scholars. In 1992 the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) commissioned a study, “ELECTORAL SYSTEMS ÔÇôA World-Wide Comparative Study;” in 1999 SADC Parliamentary Forum held a Seminar on Electoral Systems which I attended, in Arusha, Tanzania; after my article I came to learn incidentally that Justice Key Dingake had published some work in 2006: “The Role of Electoral Systems in the Institutionalisation of Democratic Governance in SADC Countries.”
The blurb on the book states: “….The book will appeal to students of politics and law, politicians, lawyers, researchers, organs of civil society, independent electoral commissions and all those working in the area of electoral reforms.”
POLITICAL PARTIES NOT PROVIDED FOR IN THE STATUTES
While I found the judge’s book commendable reading for all-the-above-mentioned groups and more, I was slightly disappointed by the omission of the subject of the constitutionality of political parties. The author being a constitutional lawyer I had hoped he would notice the lacuna in the contexualisation of political parties within the basic law. If our constitution delineates an eligible voter, shouldn’t it do the same with eligible party qualified to participate in the multiparty democratic parliamentary elections?
Browsing through my dictionary, I came upon what I think is a concise definition of ‘party: ”A group of people working together to establish or promote particular theories or principles of government which they hold in common esp., an organized political group which seeks to elect its candidates to office and thus to direct government policies.”
Note, from the definition, parties are pivotal to ‘election of candidates to office and thus to direct government policies.’ Since we are examining democracy, we should have a clause in the constitution which elucidates and relates party to multiparty parliamentary democracy and to ‘inner-party democracy’ as an essential condition for eligibility as candidate to parliament/government. A constitution that takes cognizance of parties as major role players in elections and government could assist in the choice of the best electoral system. Failure to place political party in the context of statutory provisions creates incoherence. It may be the reason why our law courts’ judgments on political cases often sound arbitrary, unintelligent and insipid. It may also be the reason why political analysts too have a blind spot to electoral systems that veer from the multiparty democracy and those that hug it.
MULTIPARTY DEMOCRACY AND THE MAJORITY PRINCIPLE
The majority principle maps the democracy territory and goal and the multiparty element sketches the road it has to traverse. In multi-party democracies people in their diversity of opinions and interests ought to be represented in parliament/council by parties they belong to or support. This should be an important point of departure when electoral systems are analysed and debated.
Democracy is complex. But any time, any place where democracy is examined the majority principle must come to the fore. The significance of this majority should be unambiguous and tied to it (democracy) and defined in the context of the people who participate in it. We say elections should be free and fair to crystallize the majority determinant in the democracy concept. We agree that in Botswana, elections have been declared free since the very first general elections. They may not have been absolutely free, but relatively free they have definitely been.
Have they been fair? No! ‘Fair’ would mean that all parties that contest the general elections start from the same line at the same time and run the length of the race on an even and level ground. That would imply that all the contestants enjoy same resources and equal treatment. We hardly ever ask whether elections were just. The justness of the elections would imply that every vote cast counted and had the same weight. Can it be just that a candidate who polled let us say 30 votes won a seat in which he/she beat four other candidates who polled 20, 25, 14 and 11 (70)? In the PR systems such outrageous results are avoided.
Article 21(3), Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:
“The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this shall be expressed in… genuine elections which shall be held by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.”
‘Genuine elections ….and equal suffrage.’ A noteworthy phraseology when we compare the systems.
ELECTORA L SYSTEMS
There are many electoral systems in the world. The major ones are the two which are usually presented in their extreme forms: The Plurality/Majority system with its popular sub-system of Winner-Takes-All (FPTP) and the Proportional Representation (PR), its popular sub-system being the PR List. Other scholars recognize three: Plurality, Mixed and PR. The fact of the matter is that there are more than three systems from permutations of all the major systems of Majority and Proportional. The permutations arise from an attempt to combine the advantages of the major systems and discard or blunt the disadvantages.
Countries adopt and often adapt certain features of one system to their own national conditions because to a large extent the electoral systems adopted in a particular country are meant to solve a specific problem or potential problem in the country. None of the system is perfect but some systems are less imperfect than others. Botswana inherited the FPTP system from the colonial power, Britain holus-bolus. With hindsight it has not been the best electoral system for the country
ADVANTAGES OF PLURALITY/MAJORITY SYSTEMS
According to scholars, advantages of majority systems are the following:
Simplicity: Simple to administer. Votes of candidates are counted and the candidate with the majority, regardless whether the combined votes of his rivals exceed his/hers, wins the constituency/seat.
Stability of government: The governing party does not have to enter into coalitions, so it is alleged the system enhances stable government. In the last British general elections no party won majority seats in the House of Commons and the Conservatives formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, which coalition we learn is going exceptionally well, ironically under the FPTP system.
The system links the voter to his/her representative. It is said the voter knows who his/her representative is, she/he can interact with him/her and convey his/her grievances/requests directly.
DISADVANTAGES OF THE MAJORITY SYSTEMS
According to the same scholars:
System is patently undemocratic: It does not relate votes cast to a number of seats in parliament or council. A party with minority votes can become a government as long as it has won a majority constituencies.
System denies sections of public opinion expression in representative institutions. In that sense it does not recognize fully that our democracy is a government of many parties, which is why we talk of multiparty parliamentary democracy.
The system excludes the marginalized groups and minorities: Women, the youth, the disabled and ethnic minorities who have their own peculiar interests are not catered for by the system.
PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
ADVANTAGES OF PR SYSTEMS
The disadvantages of Majority System are the advantages of the PR system. It is democratic. It conforms to the multiparty parliamentary democratic dispensation. It provides for marginalized interest groups
DISADVANTAGES
The advantages of the Majority system are the disadvantages of the PR system according to scholars. The allocation of seats is a little more complex to calculate and determine. It is not always conducive to stability of government. It does not link the elector with the elected in a direct way except through the party
My comment is that the advantages of the Majority system are exaggerated. There is nothing difficult in counting votes in either systems. In any case the simplicity of counting votes should not override the principles and merits of multiparty democracy: Majority, participation, equality and wider interests! When it comes to the instability of the PR, the only case study cited is always Italy; the formula and method used by Italy to calculate what is called ‘remainders’ favours numerous small parties. Indeed too many small parties in coalitions can be a nuisance, like an Israeli small Coalition partner who demanded and got a concession from the majority partner, that national airline be not scheduled to fly on Saturdays!
On their own PR systems do not automatically cause instability. Otherwise instability would be the norm in Germany, Sweden, Norway and a number of other countries which use the PR. Instability can be a function of ideology, personality differences or political immaturity.
Concerning the linkage between the elector and the elected, one can only suggest that this is only a sentimental delusion. The linkage is more psychological than material. Electorates share common interests which they express through parties they elect and joint petitions or protests they address to authorities in between elections. There is no valid reason why individual requests cannot be channeled through party or any party MP’s office. These offices should be there and accessible! Let us face it, parties are just as sensitive or even more so than an individual MP when it comes to vulnerability of losing the next elections! Demand to have an MP’s face to relate to, by voter is more of a fuss driven by what I wish to call a status fixation syndrome: shaking hands, talking, rubbing shoulders with person of status and deriving a psychological oomph from it. Voters should be taught to be better organized and better politically focused.
However as people with diverse cultural, religious, material, psychological interests and personal idiosyncrasies, and being a democratic peace-loving lot, we have to concede and make tangible compromises necessary to harmonise our differences as much as possible. In this regard the PR system proponents have come with hybrid systems. For instance there is the Mixed Member Proportional and the Alternate Vote sub-systems which mix the ‘advantages’ of the two extremes of the Majority and PR systems. The outline of these systems would need space and time to expatiate on. If required it can be done the next time.
What one needs to underline is that the PR system curtails opportunities for electoral fraud, for instance gerrymandering (open to an incumbent party) in the delimitation of constituencies and voter trafficking which is also more relatively accessible to the ruling party due to the resources the incumbent naturally commands.
One valid criticism against the PR system where it is practiced, is the undemocratic election of candidates in some countries. There is no reason nor rule why candidates cannot be elected democratically under PR. Candidates can and must be elected in primary elections, not unilaterally by the Head Office.
WHY PR SYSTEMS WOULD BE IDEAL FOR BOTSWANA
More opposition parties in Parliament would make multiparty democratic government hum, a reality, and by sheer weight improve potential for the Separation of Powers and promotion of Checks and Balances in government.
Our local parties moan and wail when MPs defect to other parties. Ba siile ka ditulo tsa party/they have fled with party seats, blah blah.’ Under the PR this would wither away; defectors would drop automatically from the party that selected them and the next member on the party list take over! Recall for the non-performers can also be effected without hitch, it is inbuilt in the PR. Party is in control.
Botswana parties are generally agreed they need more women in representative institutions. Due to the FPTP system and the fact of cultural prejudice by men and the complex by women themselves, women find it difficult to compete against men in primaries and in the general elections. Under the PR system it is easy as long as the constitution or electoral law recognizes women quotas; parties simply ensure that there is one woman for every two men on the list if the quota is 30 percent or one man to one woman if the quota is 50 percent.
Under the PR, parties can cater for the disabled as well as ethnic minorities in the same way by allocating them representation under adopted quota policies. Ethnic minorities like Basarwa are still much marginalized; under the PR system they can be allocated representative(s) who could articulate their peculiar interests better than any current MPs can ever do.
Whereas the FPTP promotes voter apathy, the PR has potential to galvanise eligible voters to go to the polls because every voter expects his/her party to have some chance to elect candidates to parliament. Voter apathy that arises as a result of the same party winning unchallenged all the time is reduced.
Winner-takes-all, promotes a two-party or a one-party de facto government. That is why we are virtually a de facto one party state. It is a dangerous short step to dictatorship! Government function needs to rotate unless it does, the longer one party stays in power the more tempted it will be to use the incumbency factor to bend rules, manipulate the electoral process and degrade democracy to autocracy and arrogantocracy.
