|
|
Botswana: Dear President Ian Khama
 |
 |
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
|
|
|||||||||
|
||||||||||
Mmegi/The Reporter (Gaborone)
EDITORIAL
1 April 2008
Posted to the web 1 April 2008
Today, you will be inaugurated as the fourth President of this nation. We want to congratulate you and wish you well on this important assignment. Not everyone can be entrusted with such an office, but you have and accepted to serve.
One of the great Republicans that we hold in high esteem, President Festus Mogae, chose you to be his deputy and to succeed him as President. We could of course lecture you on how your ascendency to the presidency is an affront to democratic ethos in the sense that you have not been popularly elected, but that is an issue to be revisited after this important day. Right now the focus of every Motswana should be on your inauguration, and the greater challenges that lie ahead. The nation expects a lot from you as they do from their other leaders. But the nation expects even more from you because in your last assignment, you were the supervisor of government's project implementation. Service delivery and infrastructural development is a major concern as you should be aware, and we believe that your presidency should be about changing this business-as-usual attitude. Government is slowly earning a bad name that it is thick on promises and very thin on delivery.
President Festus Mogae has been quite a success on turning the tide against HIV/AIDS, and we expect your presidency to do more in this area to ensure that the fight is eventually won. As Vice President, you said very little on major policy issues; that notwithstanding, we hope you will add bite to the small but valiant effort to fight corruption, particularly white-collar crime. Nepotism is slowly creeping into our society, tenders are handed out to friends and those who are corrupt. We hope that your presidency will also be about transparency and no tolerance for corruption and nepotism.
You certainly must have heard of a high level of apprehension in some quarters about your impending presidency. Because you are a military man, some believe that you are not schooled in democratic governance where a dissenting voice is respected and encouraged rather than being treated with suspicion and dissenters branded enemies and saboteurs.
We wish we could dismiss these fears as misplaced, but we cannot because only you, Mr President, can allay these fears. We hope the doubting Thomases will be pleasantly surprised as we enjoy your democratic reign. As we sing and ululate to usher you into office, we hear of anguish and uncertainty from our neighbours in Zimbabwe. They do not know when they shall be set free. We can pray for them to be delivered. We never want to go the Zimbabwe route and we hope that like your predecessors, you will ensure that we go forward and never down the abyss that we see elsewhere.
We welcome you, Mr President, and we are full of hope.
|
Today's Thought
.... the dynamics of Botswana's celebrated democracy must be investigated if the idea that the country represents a model of presidential transitions in Africa is to be properly assessed.
Professor Kenneth Good
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Copyright © 2008 Mmegi/The Reporter. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Make allAfrica.com your home page | RSS Feed | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top | Site Guide | Who We Are | Advertising | Search | Subscribe | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Questions or Comments? Contact us. Read our Privacy Statement. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
