Legislators per capita

Anything that does not end is not good.

Se sa feleng sea hlola.

The small and the relatively under-respected country of Lesotho had an election this past week and the results are in. Why should you care?

Actually, the whole election was pretty interesting from both a study of democracy and just for the story.

Those who study democracy would be interested to see a country on the rock bottom of the human development index (losing to world leaders in human misery like Haiti and Yemen, http://hdr.undp.org/en/statistics/), with a (relatively recent) history of military takeover and with a super-low GDP per capita have successful, non-violent elections that turned out the incumbents and provided new leadership. With three large parties all competing, the elections were, by most accounts, successful and represent another in a thin number of democratic successes in a decade that has not been good for democracy in developing countries.

Also, it represents the successful implementation of a Proportional Representation system over top of a First-Past-the-Post, Westminster-style parliament. It works pretty darned well, if you ask me.

Hail to the Chief

For those who want a good story, we have a large political party that fractured twice, with the prime minister of the country leading a charge against his own political movement, taking more than half of his caucus with him. It is one the worlds remaining kingdoms, though, like most, the monarch’s role is largely ceremonial. It is a human health disaster with 25% HIV infection rates. It is, bizarrely, the largest country that is completely surrounded by another country. We also have assassinations and political riots, as well as the standard issues of corruption.  

Changing the game

Our story starts in 1998. The small country has its first real election since the creation of a new constitutional order that saw the king’s power reduced in favour of the parliament. The ruling  Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), due to the nature of the FPTP system, wins almost 100% of the seats in parliament with just over 60% of the vote. This is fairly common, with the vote being declared free and fair by international monitors (verified by the South African Development Community). The losing parties, however, were not satisfied with the political-math explanation and their supporters rioted, and military officers staged a coup. Troops from South Africa and Botswana were sent in to restore order, but it was recognized that the elections would lead to instability if the system continued.

Following the unrest, the leadership of the LCD actually (surprisingly) addressed the problem, adding another 40 seats to the 80 seat legislature, and allocating them under a clever yet clear system. 

Voters receive two ballots on Election Day; the first is used to vote for a candidate in the nominal tier, while the second is for the party list tier. The list tier ballot is used to determine the number of seats each party would receive if the system was fully proportional. Seats are allocated using a variant of the Hare Quota.

Details here.

As a political science guy, this almost brings a tear to my eye in its simplicity, efficiency and its commitment, on the part of the ruling party, to democratic representation. All of the politicians could keep their jobs, and the government would still keep its majority, but citizens voting for minority parties would still be represented. This is the sort of thing that would work equally well any jurisdiction in Britain, Canada, the USA or Australia, improving democracy and competition.

To prove how well this worked, we can look at the first elections under this regime. In 2002, the the LDC won a strong majority again, with 77 seats out of 120 with 54% of the vote. This time the Basotho National Party (BNP), Lesotho’s former ruling party, was given seats under the PR system. The system guaranteed parliamentary representation to a party that received 22%  the vote, but would have had no representation in parliament otherwise. In the 2007 election, the ruling party won again, with a reduced majority, 62 out of 120 constituency seats.

Clearly, the system that they had crafted following the political violence of the 1998 elections was a success for democracy, providing a strong opposition within majority governments, while still providing for constituency support and accountability.

Parties, Factions and Splits

The 2007 election saw the LCD lose a portion of its support to a breakaway faction. In 2006, a high ranking member, Tom Thabane broke off from the LCD, taking 17 other parliamentarians with him to form the All Basotho Congress (ABC). His leadership inspired support from expatriate musicians like this guy to come back to the country. This split threatened the ruling majority of the ruling party and the Prime Minister was forced to call new elections in 2007. During those elections, 17 parliamentarians were returned under the ABC banner, winning back their constituency seats to become the third party. That same election saw the second-placed BNP lose its support to its own breakaway party, the National Independent Party.

Tensions within the ruling LDC became stronger between the 2007 and 2012 elections, leading to a public split between the prime minister and his party. Some claimed that the party leadership was trying to push the PM into retirement. He still felt himself able to run the show, and split with the LDC. He took with him a majority of the LDC members of parliament and created the Democratic Congress, a new party that would contest its first election in May of 2012.

Latest Polls

This brings us to the present day. These have been the largest and most important elections in the history of the small country. The poll was held on the 26^th of May, with results reported on the 30^th.

Prime Minister Mosisili won the largest number of seats, but it was not immediately clear that he would remain prime minister, as he took only 48 of 120 seats, with the ABC and LDC coming in with 30 and 26 seats, respectively. On May 30^th, Tom Thabane of the ABC announced that a coalition of the ABC and the LDC, along with the BNP and other small parties, would form government. (http://www.lestimes.com/?p=9446) The day after Mosisili announced that we would sit as Official Opposition Leader, solidifying the end of a government that had ruled for 14 years.

The single most important test for any democracy is 1) whether or not you can have an election that 2) replaces the incumbents with new individuals and 3) that those individuals actually get to enact their policies. The creation of a stable coalition government, with the PM returning to lead the parliamentary opposition, is a good sign for the country, and for democracy in general.