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OPINION

By Dr Lawrence Sserwambala

From the time Uganda started having her elections as an independent state to date, an electoral system called first past the post (FPTP) has always been adopted.

Under this electoral system, Ugandans have always cast a vote for a single candidate on all available sits with the candidate carrying the most votes declared the winner. Political scientists and election experts have called it the plurality voting system.

As an electoral system, FPTP has several advantages including being the simplest system to use, thus easy to understand by anyone at basic level.

However, the same has been found to have several drawbacks including its winner-take-all method, the production of inappropriate results, the ease of manipulation and disenfranchising the voice of a significant chunk of voters from the losing side. By default, it provides for a simple majority meaning that it has capacity to create a significant disgruntled part of the population.

In 2005, Uganda changed its political system from the Movement system to multipartyism, but did not change its electoral system. By implication, the ills that had for a long time bedeviled the previous political systems would continue given that elections would continue being a matter of life or death for the contestants.

With an understanding of Uganda’s political past especially with lessons from the 1980 elections, the likes of the late Dr Paul Kawanga Ssemwogerere strongly advocated proportional representation as a step to addressing such.

During the IPOD summit of leaders meeting in May 2019, the council of secretaries general recommended proportional representation (PD) to the summit of leaders for discussion, consideration and adoption. The matter was greatly discussed and appreciated. However, one may ask why until today, if it was appreciated, proportional representation has not been considered as the most suitable electoral system for our multiparty dispensation.

President Museveni suggested that for a long time, FPTP has been used and thus deeply entrenched, meaning that a significant amount of effort and time for education and sensitisation may be needed for Ugandans to understand that electoral system, including how it works such as the fact that instead of voting for an individual candidate, they would have to vote for a political party. He, therefore, suggested that the matter needed to be studied further before it could be implemented.

Indeed, Ugandans are used to the winner-take-all style of elections. We have all grown up with a system where we elect all our leaders with the winner being the candidate with the most votes, regardless of the margin of the victory. This system seems a smooth sailing for all given that proportional representation (PR) elections may at first appear strange to us. Adding to the potential confusion is the fact that there are several different kinds of PR systems in use around the world. But in reality, the principles underlying proportional representation systems are very straightforward and all of the systems are easy to use.

The cost of politics study conducted by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) in 2020 indicated that the least amount that a successful candidate for parliamentary elections can invest is sh350,000,000 and sh500,000,000 for rural and urban constituencies respectively. This obscene monetisation should concern all people of good moral standing and seek to address it swiftly. If this is to happen, there can be no better solution than proportional representation.

The president general of the Democratic Party, Hon. Norbert Mao, has been one of the strongest advocates of proportional representation. His reasoning that the adoption of such an electoral system would lift the weight off the individuals and place it on the party, stands on very solid ground.

Imagine the electorates interfacing with the leadership of the party without an individual having to go solo! Wouldn’t that be better for issue-based campaigns and politics as opposed to opportunists and populists?

Most important is the fact that as a basic principle of democracy, all voters deserve representation and that all political groups in society deserve to be represented in our legislatures in proportion to their strength among the electorate. In other words, everyone should have the right to fair representation.

There is credible evidence to suggest that the current FPTP electoral system reduces the numbers of parties elected and increases the chances of a single party winning the majority. On the contrary, there have been strong arguments to suggest that proportional representation, if adopted in Uganda, would likely increase the number of political parties represented across the board. It remains a question to be pondered whether this would be good or bad for our democracy.

Proportional representation, in a heterogeneous country like Uganda, would help produce more equitable outcomes compared to the current electoral system. The winner takes it all system, as evidenced over time, has shown that every time we have elections, the country has been left more polarised than it was before.

The 2021 general elections and violence that was associated with it are a classical reminder of this phenomenon. The quest to emerge victor from elections organised under the FPTP electoral system has led many to getting into conflict with the law and subsequently, charged. This is because from the evidence of the results, a majority of the winners were the candidates with the highest number of votes cast and not necessarily the majority of the eligible voters.

This is the falsehood majority that is created by both the numbers and perception. The picture of parliamentary representation for instance is not reflective of the actual picture on ground. With over a 70% dominance in Parliament, would it be right to say that in the parliamentary election’s actual votes, the National Resistance Movement got over 70%? Far from it. That is why proportional representation would be ideal in bringing to the fore the voices that are completely left out courtesy of FPTP. This would go a long way in dealing with issues of non-inclusiveness that are labelled against FPTP.

Advocates of electoral reforms have largely concentrated their efforts on issues like management of elections on voting day, voting technology and composition of the Electoral Commission among others. Even when all these are fixed to the satisfaction of their advocates, if the electoral system still has what it takes to drop a significant chunk of the population in the name of simple majority espoused by FPTP, a number of these ills like political polarisation will not be resolved. Instead, all electoral reform advocates should join hands with IPOD in pushing this agenda.

Studies have shown that there is a relationship between a country’s electoral system and the degree of its political polarisation. The FPTP system that Uganda embraces has tended to instil the feeling of “us-versus-them” at political party level and “me-versus-him/her” at individual level during elections.

This level of polarisation is not what Uganda needs as we nurture our young multiparty democracy. This, however, does not necessarily mean that FPTP as an electoral system causes polarisation. Even changing he electoral system from FPTP to PR will not alone take polarisation away. However, changing it will help reduce the division of the country into two political camps: the winners and losers.

Some characters in Uganda today are not willing to listen to the merits or anything good from a rival camp however meritorious it may be, largely because of a single dividing line drawn as a result of the elections.

This bad taste of electoral loss could probably explain the continued bitterness, savagery and bastardisation of our politics where people are not willing to listen to each other but resort to abuse and character assassination of their political rivals.

This should be ground enough for all to advocate proportional representation. This will protect all elected officials from being punished by voters who may not agree with all the positions taken by their own party or their behaviour as anti-democratic or corrupt.

One of the best ways we can ensure that our democracy is fully representative is by adopting an electoral system that seeks to create a representative body that reflects the overall distribution of public support for each political party as opposed to our current system that effectively rewards strong parties and penalises weak ones by resulting in the representation of a whole electoral area by a single candidate who may have received fewer than half the votes cast in that area.

IPOD believes that all stakeholders should look at the bigger picture of inclusivity in electoral and political decision-making processes which can be achieved through proportional representation.

The writer is the executive director IPOD Uganda