Gaborne — Some have expressed concern at the apparent concentration of functions in the Office of President, most have been quick to rationalise this as a desire on the part of the incumbent to micro manage the country. In my view, such assertions must be placed within context.

We have men who have been in parliament for donkey years, and the question to ask is what value can these men of the past really add to the current government? These men have lorded over regimes that resisted declaration of assets, citizen economic empowerment, and freedom of information laws. They have been central to regimes that oversaw poor allocation of land to our people, dispossession of ploughing fields, failure to generate employment opportunities for our young, failure to diversify the economy, limited access to tertiary education, poor service delivery and failure to allow mother-tongue instruction for our young. For some strange reason these men are treated as angels and knights of democracy.

A road is normally designed for 25 years, a village water reticulation scheme for 10 years and a building for 50 years. We are unable to maintain our infrastructure because of our developmental horizon that is not tied to any aspect of our infrastructure design criteria.We have allowed economists and administrators to determine our developmental model.

The economic and administrative cadres are particularly insensitive to human life. For economists, numbers matter more than quality of life. They care less whether wealth is in the hands of foreigners and not citizens. So long as their numbers show growth they are happy. An administration keen to place wealth in citizen hands will go against the grain of these old men. In order to achieve its objective, a new administration will have to concentrate power in the presidency.

The administrative cadre insists on processes that make life difficult for our people. They lord over professions like engineering even though they will confess that they did not take up the sciences because they are difficult. I have never heard of an administrator who acquired a science qualification, yet scientists routinely acquire administration qualifications with ease.

Directives apparently offend proponents of consultation. Yet these proponents will not bother to enquire as to why their darlings, the old guard, find it difficult to accommodate Batswana. They will not bother to find out whether Batswana were ever consulted on their economic marginalisation, and if they approved of such marginalisation.

The old guard is adept at manipulating a gullible media that thinks in order to sell, it must couch its reporting with reference to the fight between good and evil. A media fraternity that thinks he who claims to be good first must without question be good. The old guard even has young people blindly following them without regard to any sound ideological basis for their choices. They have surrounded themselves with young politicians who think a label is an ideological choice. These youngsters indulge in democratic jingoism and thereby fail to seriously interrogate issues.

It is not lost on some of us that it is people in these same professions, economics and administration, who are calling for amendment of the constitution. If they could not place our people first when they were in control of country what reason do we have to hold that their concerns are about the well being of our people?

For some reason they mistake their lack of understanding of what Section 41 of our constitution is about for the national view. Having misunderstood Section 41, and thereby loosing a skirmish with the incumbent president, they want to ascribe their misinterpretation and, therefore, misguided battle to be a fight for democracy. In calling for a panel of external judges they go against the longstanding call by the Law Society for localisation of the Court of Appeal. This contradiction is lost on them. That this call casts a negative light on citizen judges is also lost on them. They are after all defenders of democracy and such niceties are irrelevant.

I do not believe it is correct for any sector to rubbish long held positions and aspirations under the guise of defending democracy without demonstrating whether the cost is worth it. The Law Society has just honoured legal practitioners with more than twenty years experience, most of them citizens. Our defenders of democracy are effectively suggesting that these lawyers are not properly qualified to be judges of the Court of Appeal. If such contradictions are lost on them why should our people have any confidence in them?

Imagine a situation where a white man who knows little about lions but who knows a lot about bravery comes to Botswana, and sleeps outside and gets mauled by a lion. Do we only have the option to celebrate his bravery when he shows us his injuries or can we hold that he should have first informed himself about lions? Would we be wrong to hold that bravery was never at issue and that we have no business going after the lion for we need it to generate tourism income?

The battle is not, and was never about democracy, but for a captive voice whose sole purpose is to legitimise exercise of power. Both sides of the BDP know this. Some have disclosed that they were successful at Kanye because they provided superior accommodation to the captive voices. This cynical exploitation of people cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called democracy and defence of the founding ideology of the BDP. The continuing accommodation needs of this fodder have been long forgotten.They are left to their own devices to be called upon again in two years' time.

My mother and sisters are supporters of the BDP. They will never attend a meeting called by Rre Merafhe, their member of parliament. They will never participate in BDP cells, but will invariably vote for the BDP come election day. It is this solid and loyal support that both sides of the BDP are fighting for, not democracy. I believe as a trained engineer and lawyer they look to me to ensure their voice has a pleasing melody. I believe all other educated sons and daughters have a duty to do the same for the captive voice of their parents. Any failure on the part of the sons and daughters is to relegate their parents to political fodder.

It is time engineers played a leading role in the development planning of this country. The new ministry of infrastructure must take a leading role to ensure a better quality of life for our people and the Ministry of Finance tasked with sourcing finance for the planned infrastructure development. The Ministry of Finance must play a facilitating and empowering role. It must take the perspective that the purpose of an economic system is to serve the needs of our people.

Poverty is a real and inhumane condition that none of our people should endure.Arguments by economists and administrators that we have reduced poverty to 17.5 percent instead of 20 percent betray a failure to appreciate that the continued poverty of our people is not acceptable. Some of our people have died and will continue to die never having been part of the 80 percent that we claim to be not poor. A significant proportion of the poor are our young. When government took over mineral rights it made our people a promise, to ensure that the mineral wealth is to the benefit of all our people. It did not make a promise to benefit only 80 percent of our people.

Given the blatantly partisan nature of our media and its gullibility in its dealings with these old men, it is also quite possible that a president might be inclined to seek to control the media to mitigate the influence of these old men. They feign a victim status and our media practitioners swallow this without bothering to interrogate just why it is so important for a man to desire to be in parliament for more than 20 years?

For some reason, we assume that parliament is a check on executive power, but fail to appreciate that the president is a check on parliamentary excess. Such excess might manifest itself in overstaying of people who are clearly past their prime and are a draw back on our developmental efforts. A strong and centralised executive might be geared at mitigating the effects of such parliamentary excess arising out of irrational and captive democracy.

Our judges enjoy immunity from suit, and the same applies to administrative bodies that are treated as quasi-judicial bodies. What have the courts said about the need for the immunity that they enjoy? How come we do not hold that judges are above the lawGiven that we hold and support that the judiciary is a check on the executive, what would opening a president to suits do to the balance of the relationship between the judiciary and the executive?

Let us deal with substantive issues and not waste time pretending that we have a monopoly on upholding the founding principles of the BDP. It is in line with the BDP founding ideology that people should be judged on the quality of what they do. I do not believe any member of the BDP can hold that they understand this more than another. If the BDP has deviated from this, its members must not confuse such deviation with the national constitution.

The founders of the BDP never portrayed themselves as victims. They were activists who put forward an alternative government structure to bogosi. They did not appeal to emotions. I believe one cannot profess to be guided by the founding principles of the BDP yet fail to engage. Our young must engage in serious and open debate.

It is not lost on some of us that after failing to win the battle within the BDP, the vanquished sought to externalise the fight and draw in other institutions without regard to other interests as shown above. They first tried to draw in the courts and now want to draw in parliament. Why should their opponents limit use of institutional power at their disposal if they believe themselves to be guardians of the captive voice? Must the captive voice that has tasted positive changes in public service delivery give this up for some undefined concept of democracy? Will the captive voice accept destruction of the agent who in their view caused improvements in service delivery? I read somewhere that Seretse once remarked that the common tribal man can teach a sophisticated Englishman a thing or two about human dignity. I believe some might be shocked to learn that the common man wants the incumbent to be left at peace to get on with the job. Perhaps I am being too harsh on our young, after all, they get support from a former anti-apartheid activist who has no problem referring to the Court of Appeal bench as "imported judges" quite obviously suggesting something about their judgment. I do not believe the ANC would have discounted his contribution on the basis that he was an import. The activist conveniently forgets that the losing protagonist had asked for a foreign-based bench.The ease with which cheerleaders abandon principle must cause our young to pause.

"Excellence dwells in rocks hardly accessible, and a man must almost wear his heart out before he can reach her. Whoever talks of excellence as common and abundant, is on the way to lose all right standard of excellence", Mathew Arnold, 1930. Democracy is like excellence; if we throw the word democracy about without regard to right standards we are on the way to ruin. Our young must understand that we do not owe them any duty to agree with what they say without its interrogation. We would be remiss in our duty to our country and to them if we did not test their submissions. This is the only way to get the best leaders out of them. It is from those who show excellence that we should look for tomorrow's leaders.