By Ray Naluyaga
As Britons celebrate their government’s change, political analysts have urged Tanzania to change its existing electoral system for want of an effective representation in the government and parliament.
The British Conservative leader, Mr David Cameron, became UK’s new prime minister after the resignation of Mr Gordon Brown on Tuesday night. The former has formed a unity government with the Liberal Democratic Party, whose leader, Mr Nick Clegg, will be his deputy. This follows an election held last week.
This is UK’s first coalition government in 70 years and political analysts told The Citizen yesterday that Tanzania can learn from the UK democracy and serve its electorates better.
Speaking to The Citizen on what Tanzania can learn from the just-ended British elections, the analysts said the current system that Tanzania follows was archaic and does not serve the voters well.
They urged Tanzania to go the UK way by adopting the proportional representation system.
But, in a quick rejoinder, the CCM deputy chairman, Mr Pius Msekwa, said the proportional system might seem to be good, but was not a panacea to all problems related to representation despite the fact that in this system every vote counts.
“Proportional representation is not a perfect system either. In this system you are almost obliged to form a coalition government after every General Election. This is something which leaves the country without a government for a long time due to inter party negotiations that go with it,” he said.
He said in most cases the system never produces an outright winner, and this might not be good for young democracies like Tanzania’s.
He said for the last 70 years the British electoral system has been producing an outright winner. This year’s election is an isolated incident which does not legitimise a wholesale change of the electoral system in Tanzania, he added.
But Prof Mwesiga Baregu, a Political Science lecturer at the St Augustine University (Saut), said despite the fact that change of the electoral system has been at the centre of this year’s British elections, the country has been forced into it by the electorate through the election results which did not produce an outright winner.
“We have been talking about shifting from the ‘winner takes all’ system to a proportional representation one because it gives the opportunity for solutions to problems facing the country to be worked out collectively,” said Prof Baregu.
For his part, Mr Ismail Jussa, a Civic United Front (CUF) nominated MP and the director of foreign affairs of the opposition party, likened what happened this year in the UK election to what happened in Tanzania in the 2005 General Election.
He said in that election, CUF had 14 per cent of the total votes on the mainland, but ended up without a single MP. However, in the proportional system the party could have been entitled to a number of seats that reflect the percentage of the total votes it had won.
Putting the disadvantages of the first electoral system practised in Tanzania, Mr Jussa said during the 2005 General Election Chama cha Demokrasia na Maendeleo (Chadema) had garnered seven percent of the total votes. However, it ended up getting five MPs while the Tanzania Labour Party (TLP) with 70,000 votes got only one MP, he said and explained:
“This shows how unfair the system is. In proportional representation CUF could have been entitled to about 30 seats based on the percentage of the total votes we got; this system is outdated.”
He called on Tanzanians to emulate the British example not to give Parliamentary dominance to one party. Experience has shown that the situation is often abused by the dominant party to pass legislations which are not compatible with the needs of the people, he said.
In the UK general election last week, Mr Cameron’s party won most of the seats. But these were not enough for the party to secure an overall House of Commons majority, resulting into a hung Parliament.
With regard to lessons learnt from the British election, Mr Msekwa urged Tanzanians to respect opinion polls because in the UK they have proved to reflect the reality.
He said before the election, the polls repeatedly showed that there would not be an outright winner and it came to be just that.
UK went to the polls five days ago with the Conservative party emerging the winner. It won 306 seats, followed by Labour with 258 seats while the Liberal Democrats garnered 57 seats.
Neither of the parties was able to acquire the 320 seats needed to form a government, putting the UK into a five-day limbo as parties negotiated deals to form a coalition government.
It was announced yesterday that the Conservatives have reached a deal with the Liberal Democrats to form a coalition government for the first time the last 70 years.
The Citizen
