Dhlakama would have won under US system – Hanlon

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Dhlakama would have won under US system – Hanlon

8:29 CAT | 09 Jan 2017

File photo / Afonso Dhlakama at a campaign rally in 2014

The US system of democracy last year named as President the person who came second in the popular vote. Hillary Clinton won 66 million votes, 3 million more than Donald Trump, who was named President. (In 2000, Al Gore won more votes, but George W Bush was elected President.)

Because the US presents itself as such a paragon of democracy, we should look at how the US system would work in Mozambique. Unlike Mozambique, in the US people do not vote for the President directly. Instead, they vote for “electors”. For each state, the number of electors is the number of people in congress (Senate plus House of Representatives) from that state. All the electors must vote for the candidate who wins the most votes in that state.

How would this system have worked in Mozambique? Assume that the number of “electors” for each province is the number of seats that province has in parliament – close to the US system. In 2014, Afonso Dhlakama of Renamo won the most votes in five provinces: Nampula, Zambezia, Tete, Manica and Sofala. There are 250 seats in parliament, but those five provinces account for 151 seats. With 151 electors, Dhlakama would have overwhelmingly won the 2014 election, even though he gained 1 million fewer votes than Filipe Nyusi.

How could that happen? The race was close in the provinces Dhlakama won, and he won more than half the votes in only two provinces (56% in Sofala and 53% in Zambezia). But Nyusi won more than two-thirds of the vote in five provinces, and his large margins in the those provinces were greater than Dhlakama’s small margins in his five provinces. So Dhlakama “won” in the bigger provinces, but Nyusi won the most votes in total.

This is one of the issues in the current war – is victory determined by a majority of votes, or by gaining the most votes in the big provinces?

Perhaps the US should be pushing its system in Mozambique, so that the candidate that wins the election is the one who comes second in the popular vote.

By Joseph Hanlon

Source: News reports & clippings