IEC, UDC case: A possible game changer
Ryder Gabathuse | Monday November 20, 2023 06:00
From some quarters, Botswana’s elections have been hailed as free and not necessarily fair. To many, the elections registration case is indeed a clash of principles as the UDC claims to have experience from the 2019 General Election, which they allege prompted them to closely guard the General Election processes commencing with the registration exercise.
Led by Advocate Duma Boko, the UDC, a coalition of parties that include the Botswana National Front (BNF), the Botswana Peoples Party (BPP), the Alliance for Progressives (AP) and the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF), have vowed to leave no stone unturned in their endeavour to fight what it calls systematic ‘rigging’ of the national polls.
The IEC is washing its hands clean of any possibility of muddying the proverbial waters during registration and even at the polls and it wants to continue with the registration exercise without the UDC or any parties monitoring the process as that has no provision in the law.
This matter has become contentious and it continues to attract public interest as people have been thronging the Francistown High Court in large numbers. The case, which seems to be hitting the core of the country’s Constitution and challenging the IEC’s independence, has all the hallmarks of being a possible game changer, either way.
The case might also provide a stern test to Botswana’s electoral system, as well as the judiciary, with the latter recently being accused of taking sides with the ruling elite or simply Executive-minded. Chief Justice Terence Rannowane has recently found himself parrying allegations of judicial interference raised by some judges of the High Court over different matters.
Botswana’s electoral system has for the past 57 years produced a single-party dominant power, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), since 1966.
In recent weeks, the IEC has been steadfast, parrying all the efforts of the UDC operatives also known as Madibela-Tlhopho to observe the registration for the impending 2024 General Election.
The registration exercise intended to commence between November 1-30, 2023, has been postponed indefinitely, leaving some people fearing that as the UDC/IEC continue to fight incessantly, the country might find itself gripped by a constitutional crisis. President Mokgweetsi Masisi recently indicated that the matter of registration for elections would be on course even in the midst of legal wrangling.
Thrice in a space of weeks, the UDC went to the Francistown High Court seeking an order to observe the process of the registration of national elections, which was supposed to have commenced on November 1, 2023 and ended at the end of November 2023. But, this important exercise could not start after the UDC was granted a temporary relief that it could go ahead and observe the process of registration for the 2024 General Election, which at least by far, has not seen the light of the day.
The IEC chose to strategically ignore the court order and issued an extra-ordinary Government Gazette postponing the registration process to November 13, 2023 when the court would have heard the matter ahead of November 13, 2023, the new registration date.
This week, it was apparent that the fight for the IEC to preserve its status threatened by accusations of ‘bias’ by its challengers is going to be a gruelling affair. The planned new registration date could not see the light of day as the IEC could not proceed with the registration exercise after Justice Gaolapelwe Ketlogetswe of the Francistown High Court had granted the UDC its wish to observe the registration exercise.
Besides the argument that the desires of the UDC to observe the registration exercise are not provided for in the country’s Constitution, the IEC has not opened up as to what will exactly happen if the UDC observers were granted their wish, safe to say, that their wish is not even covered by any section of the law, emphasising that the law was silent on the UDC demands.
The registration for the 2024 General Election is a crucial democratic process that in some people’s views has the potential to spoil our democracy if it could be flawed. People feel the elections are won or lost through the registration process, something that the UDC claims they long ignored until they got a wake-up call in the 2019 General Election when they had an ‘unexplained’ loss of the polls when they were at their very best to compete for the elections.
Buoyed by its untested allegations that the IEC was helping the ruling party to ‘rig’ the elections, the UDC, which petitioned the results of the 2019 General Election citing irregularities, but could not succeed, took upon itself to prepare for the elections starting with the registration exercise in an endeavour to ensure the process of elections was ‘flawless’.
For the past 12 five-year polls, the IEC, a department supervised by the Office of the President (OP), has been registering people for the elections without anyone monitoring the process and doubting the information they collated. Now, in the ongoing case, Justice Ketlogetswe had at some stage ruled that there is nothing wrong with the UDC observation of the registration process as voters’ rolls at some stage are open for examination by political parties taking part in the elections in an endeavour to weed out voter trafficking. This has been a common practice that helps some politicians to win internal and general election.
Commenting on the ongoing case, Associate Professor of Law at the University of Botswana (UB) Tachilisa Balule explained that the electoral process is not only about the end results, emphasising that it starts with the process of registration and ends with the results.
His position is that with the election, the process starts with registration as a crucial stage, then voting and announcing the results amongst others. “You therefore, can’t divorce the whole process of registration as out of bounds for monitoring and allow monitoring only at other levels of elections,” he explained.
To him, when people talk free and fair elections, transparency and accountability are key to the whole process. The UB academic cannot really make sense of the position of the IEC preventing the UDC and other parties from monitoring the registration exercise whilst they are key stakeholders.
“If the IEC can bend and allow monitoring of the registration process, it will make Botswana’s election process more transparent,” Balule said. He added that should the court agree with the IEC that there should be no monitoring of the registration process, “it will be a sad day to promote free and fair elections in Botswana.”
He has concerns if the registration process could not be monitored as that might offer an opportunity for voter trafficking in which some politicians have been benefitting unduly.
“I will be disappointed if the ultimate ruling of the High Court will be that the process of elections registration does not allow monitoring of the registration exercise,” Balule told Mmegi.
Another UB academic, politics and administrative studies lecturer, Adam Mfundisi holds the view that in a democratic dispensation like ours, monitoring of the registration exercise is a given, “and it’s long overdue.”
He says in the whole chain of elections, all other processes are dependent on the liability and validity of the registration exercise. Mfundisi hails the monitoring of the elections registration exercise as very important for democratic consolidation.
He observes that the current registration exercise has been open to manipulation of the officers doing the actual registration, which defeats good tenets of democracy as it serves the interests of the few who are in control of the levers of power.
Mfundisi also told Mmegi that the elections processes should be audited for transparency sake.
“Just like Justice Ketlogetswe has pronounced recently in one of his rulings, you wonder why the IEC allows the opposition access to the voters’ rolls only when verifying the authenticity of the rolls without knowing the veracity of the information entered into the rolls,” observed Mfundisi.
On the other hand, the UB academic is agreeable that the opposition has long slept on the job as the registration process is very crucial emphasising, “Botswana will never be the same again after the current case is dispensed of.”
He was also worried that the government manipulates the constituencies through the Delimitation Commission exercise as they shift things in their favour.