New electoral model will haunt us

Last month I listened to the chairperson of the National Reforms Authority (NRA), Pelele Letsoela, on national radio talking about amendments to our electoral model. This new proposed amendment will cut the number of constituencies from 80 to 60 and increase the number of Proportional Representation (PR) seats from 40 to 60. Letsoela argued that the national stakeholders’ dialogue had mandated the NRA to ensure that women and other disadvantaged groups were well represented in the National Assembly. The argument that Letsoela peddled that this will accommodate more women and provide for MPs representing disabled persons and other disadvantaged groups is flawed and lazy thinking. This argument completely misses the actual point of the old maxim: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” In other words if you try to fix it, you might screw it up. The Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) model is the voting system we use which was adopted from New Zealand. We use MMP to choose who represents us in Parliament. Prior to the MMP model the former system was dominated by one party, the Basotho Congress Party (BCP) or Lesotho Congress for Democracy. Since its introduction, Congress parties have been forced into sometimes strained relationships with coalition partners. On the same platform, Monyane Moleleki, the leader of the Alliance of Democrats (AD) argued that “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I completely agree with Moleleki. He is concerned about accidentally making matters worse, not that he is lazy or insufficiently concerned with continuous improvement to the electoral model. In fact findings of the district consultations are in agreement with that line of thinking. Basotho clearly said the electoral model should not be changed. This reminds me of my life in a church I served at a time when we made history by employing a black Pastor. I served as the church administrator and a youth pastor. It was an international and interdenominational church based in Maseru called Maseru United Church. When the contract of the black Pastor expired, he left and the church elected the new chairperson of the Board who was white. He engaged the services of a white Pastor to become an interim Pastor and the interim Pastor immediately started looking for ways to improve anything and everything because it was done by a black Pastor. The problem is, nearly everything we had that was not optimal, was still actually good enough for our needs and usually included some complexity that was not obvious at first glance. He ignored his own American “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it” advice and every single time he tried to improve something he ended up breaking it or making it worse. I eventually resigned from the two positions I occupied in the church and joined the civil society organisations. It is even worse when the motive behind the change is ill-conceived. Racism is bad and it has often blinded those that wanted to change everything. Sometimes a simple but sub-optimal solution that gets the job done well enough and reliably is better than an optimised solution that includes downtime and requires extra maintenance. I do not think the person offering the advice to leave things alone is always the naïve one. Not at all. In fact, Moleleki is a very intelligent and wise leader. I am trying to emphasise the focus on the motive for changing everything in this article. If you are fearful of breaking it this is not good. We need to be confident that we can make changes without screwing it up. This new change in my opinion will screw things up. This country shall forever be unstable with small parties dictating how government should be run. This is so wrong because it goes against the principle of democracy. The MMP system was already giving too much power to small parties but this new system will be worse. It will give greater power to tiny parties and make smooth governing tricky with sometimes difficult coalition agreements formed between traditionally adversarial parties. The 40 seats in Parliament are also known as compensatory seats. Please ask the NRA how many compensation seats are needed for the outcome to be compensatory? These seats are meant to make up for a loss in the constituency seats. This model was founded on first past the post model. It is a compensation for failing to get constituency seats. We risk the voting minority undermining the rights of a majority. The switch to the MMP system has resulted in a more diverse parliament including more female representation. But it has also brought us huge challenges of coalition governments. These new changes to our electoral model will get us into deeper problems where small parties become kingmakers in the formation of government. Those in the majority end up compromising their mandate in order to please small masters. Look at how the AD arm-twisted the All Basotho Convention (ABC) into allowing two deputy ministers in one ministry. The AD’s demands were unreasonable but because of power the ABC was forced to accommodate the AD with its demands. On the other hand I will be the first to agree that too many people create poor first attempts and leave it at that, claiming later “if it ain’t broke”. I think this is a recipe for disaster because it reflects an attitude that lacks a desire to improve. However I agree that the MMP model is not a perfect model but politics of opportunism should not force us to cut constituencies and increase compensatory seats. In fact if there are any changes we can make to our electoral model I am of the opinion that we should go back to 80 constituencies and do away with 40 compensatory seats. The MMP model has brought with it unwanted coalition governments, instability increased frequencies of elections and waste of limited resources. However, there are times when it “ain’t broken” and it is good enough, and in this situation I agree with Moleleki that you would not want people wasting time looking to make micro-optimisations. Ultimately I am making the point that the NRA needs to have the right attitude toward improvement of our electoral model. Basotho categorically stated that they do not want the model to change. And that must be respected. Ramahooana Matlosa