Botswana General Election

[Devonian]

Polls closed about an hour ago in today's election. Counting underway

[Devonian]

Botswana's ruling party was leading in most local council constituencies as general election results trickled in Saturday, but opposition parties made a strong showing in the capital, the electoral commission said.

There had been delays in the counting of parliamentary ballots and no results had been received so far, the Independent Electoral Commission spokesman Osupile Maroba told AFP.

"We are hoping to start receiving parliamentary results from 57 poling districts by mid-morning," he said.

Parliamentary results will also determine who will be president for the next five years, with incumbent Ian Khama of the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) expected to win a second term.

"We are still on track for the release of final results by the end of the day," said Maroba.

The IEC had verified results from 200 of the 490 local council voting districts, with the BDP winning six of the capital Gaborone's 13 wards.

The newly formed Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), a coalition of parties contesting the elections for the first time, took four wards while the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) won three.

The election was seen as the most competitive for the BDP, which has ruled Botswana since independence from Britain in 1966, after a split in the party in 2010.

The landlocked, diamond-rich southern African country of two million people is seen as one of the continent's strongest democracies, and electoral authorities said the Friday vote saw a high turnout of the 800,000 registered voters.



AFP

africanelections.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/botswana-ruling-party-leads-in-initial.html

[Devonian]

With 56 of the 57 constituencies declared so far the results are


Botswana Democratic Party 37
Umbrella for Democratic Change 16
Botswana Congress Party 3

www.dailynews.gov.bw/news-list.php?srccategory=37

This will be the BDP's 11th election victory in a row since 1965 but looks like it will be the first election where they got less than 50% of the vote.

[Devonian]

Final results

Botswana Democratic Party 37

Umbrella for Democratic Change 17

Botswana Congress Party 3


Audio of UDC spokesman Moeti Mohwasa explaining what he thinks are the reasons for the opposition defeat

soundcloud.com/radiofranceinternationale/botswana-election-results-moeti-mohwasa

[Devonian]

Interactive map of the election results here

www.electionsbotswana.org/

Not entirely suprisingly there's a clear cluster of opposition held seats in and around Gaborone with the ruling party winning the bulk of the seats in the rest of the country.

Six out of seven seats in the South East district that contains the capital were won by opposition parties. So were both seats in Kgatleng District to the north of the capital and four out of seven seats in the Southern District to the south of the capital. In the Kweneng District  the town Mogoditshane, a suburb of Gaborone, was won by the opposition whilst both seats in the town of Molepolole 50km west of Gaborone were also won by the opposition.

However the other five seats in Kweneng District were all won the the governing BDP. The BDP also won 28 of the 33 seats in the remaining six districts of Botswana.

[hullenedge]

BDP thrown out of office for the first time since independence.

[Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells]

Nov 1, 2024 9:04:03 GMT hullenedge said:

BDP thrown out of office for the first time since independence.

It's interesting how a small economic downturn can precipitate the downfall of an entire government!

[The Bishop]

Was this historic outcome expected? It does seem to have caught a few by surprise.

[Sibboleth]

Nov 1, 2024 12:50:23 GMT The Bishop said:

Was this historic outcome expected? It does seem to have caught a few by surprise.

Defeat seems to have been thought likely, but not a rout on this scale.

[Davıd Boothroyd]

It's a good test for Botswana, which has been politically very stable and is (I think) Africa's longest established democracy.

[J.G.Harston]

Nov 1, 2024 12:27:48 GMT Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells said:

Nov 1, 2024 9:04:03 GMT hullenedge said:

BDP thrown out of office for the first time since independence.

It's interesting how a small economic downturn can precipitate the downfall of an entire government!

Isn't Botswana one of those seemingly impossible combinations: stable democractic African country.

[Georg Ebner]

Remember, when i coloured in an African map the dictatorships and finally only the RSA remained - and Botswana...

[Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells]

Nov 1, 2024 15:20:11 GMT J.G.Harston said:

Nov 1, 2024 12:27:48 GMT Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells said:

It's interesting how a small economic downturn can precipitate the downfall of an entire government!

Isn't Botswana one of those seemingly impossible combinations: stable democractic African country.

I think the real reason is the country's boundaries, and this is what has made those characteristics impossible elsewhere. The boundaries drawn to led to a population who are more than 80 percent Tswana, hence the stability. Elsewhere in Africa (e.g. Nigeria - the Hausa-speaking/Igbo-speaking/Yoruba-speaking divide), the tribal conflict has been one of the main causes of instability.

[sanders]

Singapore should take note of this. Their government has been in power since 1959.

[Sibboleth]

Nov 2, 2024 16:38:13 GMT sanders said:

Singapore should take note of this. Their government has been in power since 1959.

Yes but they rig elections. The more concerning recent news for them would be what has happened to their de facto ideological soulmates in Bangladesh, but it's a lot harder to get away with that sort of thing in a proper country (especially a large one) than a city state.

[Delighted Of Tunbridge Wells]

Nov 2, 2024 16:38:13 GMT sanders said:

Singapore should take note of this. Their government has been in power since 1959.

As long as they can maintain and slightly grow the economic prowess that is the Singaporean economy, it should remain stable.

[Khunanup]

Nov 1, 2024 19:16:16 GMT Georg Ebner said:

Remember, when i coloured in an African map the dictatorships and finally only the RSA remained - and Botswana...

Senegal says hello.

[Georg Ebner]

The reigning BDP retained only 4 seats - and came second in not less than 47!
What explains the sharp disCrepance between votes (30.5%) and seats (6.6%).
The population was clearly eager to get rid of them.

[Georg Ebner]

[greyfriar]

www.spectator.co.uk/article/a-fragile-democracy-has-bloomed-in-botswana/

Interesting article on the backstory by a Zimbabwean journalist.