BALLOT News X Issue No. 2 September 2007 ZIMBABWE ELECTORAL SYSTEM capable of healing needs an By Jealousy Mawarire J udging from past events, the Zimbabwe political landscape is a minefield that has generated acrimonious relations between the two major political parties in Zimbabwe, Zanu-PF and the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Pre-election violence, accusations and counter-accusations of electoral fraud and litigations have characterised the elections in Zimbabwe since 2000. Such a political climate calls for an electoral process capable of healing the wounds resultant of the political tension obtaining in the country since the dawning of the new millennium. There is need for an electoral process that can create joyous losers, those that lose in humility and rational enough to realise the election is not all about winning but creating a Zimbabwe that we want. May be the first question would be what is and electoral system? An electoral system can easily be understood as a way in which votes are translated into seats. There are hundreds of electoral systems currently in use and many more permutations on each form. However, there are three broad families of electoral systems • Majority Plurality Systems (First Past The Post/FPTP; Block Vote; A l t e r n a t i v e Vo t e ; Tw o r o u n d System) • Semi Proportional Systems (Parallel; Limited Vote Single NonTransferable Vote/SNTV) POLITICAL wounds Political violence victim • Proportional representation systems (List PR; Mixed Member Proportional, Single Transferable Vote) Zimbabwe's electoral system is a “first past the post” system with single member constituencies where the candidate with the most votes wins a seat in the House of Assembly/Senate. While the system ensures accountability to constituents for those elected, FPTP has, however, tended to create outright winners who care little about building bridges with contesting parties. Therefore, used on its own, FPTP tends to fail in the proposed task of healing political wounds. 23 It is with this understanding that we propose proportional representation to be merged to FPTP to come up with the best electoral system for the parliamentary vote, and PR proper for the senate. Therefore, the Mixed Member Proportional Representation (MPPR), as used in Lesotho, would entail that FPTP would be used for contested parliamentary seats while PR would come into force for compensatory seats which, in the current situation, are occupied by nonconstituency MPs appointed by the executive. There is need to contextualise this call by assessing the political situation since 2000. The mood of bitterness in Zimbabwean Continued on page 24 X