We must be grateful that we have an electoral system that delivers results.
As I’m writing this piece on a cold Friday night, results are busy pouring in reflecting the extent to which the British people have overwhelmingly rejected attempts to introduce in their country an electoral system that, in Botswana, is often referred to as Proportional Representation.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it is a kind of electoral system favoured by many of our opposition parties and their intellectual sympathizers, not because it enhances popular participation but because it holds the greatest promise to bring them closer to state power.
I am very excited that Britain, a very advanced and sophisticated nation, with a population much more politically tuned up than ours, has resolved to keep in place exactly the kind of system some of our progressive parties have been raising their voices to get us as a country to abandon.
I concede that there is no one electoral system that is perfect.
But compared to what we currently have, I have not the slightest doubt that Proportional Representation is a terrible farce.
In fact, I have been monitoring the situation in Britain with keen interest and anxiety, well aware just how buoyed our opposition were going to be had the British decided to change their electoral system in favour of proportional representation.
As our former colonial masters, it is not by accident that we often take cue from London.
One can only imagine that at least for a foreseeable future the debate about electoral reform will subside.
That has always been my hope.
I like first Past the Post. How can I not like it? It promotes democracy and empowers the voter.
It creates a direct link between the politician and those who vote.
I like this system because it gives an aura that ultimate resides not with politicians but with voters.
I know how deeply this will annoy the BCP leader, Dumelang Saleshando, who, taking the cue from BCP founder, Mike Dingake, has for close to a decade now been Botswana’s foremost proponent of Proportional Representation.
But the fact of the matter is that first-Past- the- Post offers choice and accountability.
Not only is it easier to administer, it is also the only known electoral system that is best known to promote a direct link between the voter and the voted for.
As a result, the system comes closest to guaranteeing political accountability among those who have been elected into office.
Because it is constituency based, voters can easily relate and identify with the person they look up to as their rep.
For a country with fragmented political interests that call themselves political parties, it is almost a given that Proportional Representation will forever deliver hung parliaments where no party has garnered enough votes as to be allowed to form a Government on its own, forcing to hold elections after elections.
That can hardly be a good recipe for political stability.
By its very nature, Proportional Representation takes away power from the voter and lends it to party bosses who are the ones drawing up lists of names by order of preference.
A system that dis-empowers the voter while strengthening faceless party bosses cannot be promoted under the pretext of promoting democracy.
Personally, I want the voter not party bosses to be the one choosing their MPs and ultimately their Government.
But as we have already demonstrated, Proportional Representation is an electoral system under which party bosses have the ultimate prerogative as to who, through the use of the list, becomes a member of parliament, who becomes a councilor and, by extension, who becomes a minister or President.
The true reason, we want to emphasise why our opposition parties have been calling for electoral reform, especially their demand for Proportional Representation, is because it is a system that has the biggest potential to deliver power to them in the shortest time. By its very nature, Proportional Representation delivers a few more seats to any opposition than would be the case with First Past the Post.
I applaud the British people not only for their foresight and imagination but more because this week’s events in Britain are almost likely to set a tone for events in Botswana in as far as the direction of electoral reform debate is concerned.
