A general view of marked ballots during the process of counting the votes at the Sir Seretse Khama Community Junior Secondary School, counting centre of Gaborone-Bonington North constituency in Gaborone on October 31. Picture: Monirul Bhuiyan / AFP
Preliminary results from Botswana's elections showed Friday the party that ruled the diamond-rich country for nearly six decades had suffered a historic defeat with opposition groups taking enough seats to control parliament.
Results reported by various counting centres showed the three opposition parties had together taken 31 of 61 seats in the national legislature at Wednesday's elections, according to an AFP tally. The results are expected to be confirmed by the Independent Electoral Commission later Friday with counting still underway.
President Mokgweetsi Masisi's Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which has ruled since the country's independence from Britain in 1966, has won only one seat so far.
The left-leaning opposition Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), headed by Harvard-educated human rights lawyer Duma Boko, was leading the count with 19 seats, according to AFP's tally of reporting from the counting centres.
This was followed by seven for the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) and five for the Botswana Patriotic Front.
Under Botswana's election system, the first party to take 31 of the 61 parliamentary seats will be declared the winner and install its candidate as president.
More than one million people were registered to vote, from a population of 2.6 million, with concerns about unemployment and mismanagement in Masisi's first term leading complaints.
Botswana is the world's second-largest diamond producer behind Russia.
AFP