Description of Electoral System:

The President is the Head of State and Government and is indirectly elected by the National Assembly after each parliamentary election. The President is restricted to two terms of office and serves a 5-year term.

Legislative Power is vested in parliament, consisting of the President and the National Assembly, acting in certain cases after consultation with the House of Chiefs. The National Assembly has 61 elected seats; 57 members are directly elected by universal adult suffrage, and 4 members are indirectly elected by the National Assembly from a list of candidates submitted by the President. The President and the Attorney General are ex officio members of the Assembly and the life of the Assembly is five years. The House of Chiefs is an advisory body which comprises of the Chiefs of the eight principle tribes of Botswana, four members elected by sub-chiefdoms and three specially elected members.

Politics of Botswana

Botswana, has held uninterrupted multi-party elections since obtaining independence from Britain in 1966 and is Africa's longest continuous democracy. Despite regular elections, a free press and respect for human rights, the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has maintained electoral dominance since independence.

Although the BDP has experienced a steady erosion of electoral support over time, the opposition has been too fragmented to capitalize on this. The fielding of competing candidates by the opposition parties, in the context of the single-member plurality constituency system, has ensured that the BDP has been able to maintain larger majorities in the National Assembly than its percentage of the vote would warrant.