Umbrella announced contours of its manifesto; BCP announced its shadow cabinet – both announcements are positive for the path towards changing Botswana During the week of 17th February 2014, the President and Secretary General of the Umbrella dispatched the party’s Head of Policy (in this case myself) to pre-announce the five pillars of our manifesto over the radio (Duma FM on 17 February and Gabz Fm on 19 February). The intention was to offer the people of Botswana a glimpse of how our Movement perceives the challenges of our time, and to take them into confidence about some of the mechanisms we intend to deploy to resolve these challenges. One of our key themes is the conviction that we can do much better than we are doing as a nation, much better. Our Movement further argued that these challenges, and how we propose to tackle them are what has informed the envisaged structure of our nation’s Government should our people elect the Umbrella to form Government in the 2014 elections. The President of the Umbrella is scheduled to announce, in April, our Government structure proposals, which necessarily go beyond the complexion of cabinet alone. In his speech of 22 February 2014, President Boko indicated that the thinking of the Umbrella leadership is to focus on presenting our proposals on how we wish to foment change, in a way that significantly improves the lives of our citizens. Our members are expected, over time, to carry the message to all our citizens, so we are all on board about what is possible. These possibilities that define the new Botswana, are to be implemented by this envisaged/proposed Government structure. Indeed, there had been a debate, as there should be in every democratic institution, around whether it was necessary to attach names at this point of our ensuing revolution. The overwhelming feeling was that this was not necessary. The recommendation of the Policy team of which I am part had argued, in particular, that the leadership should, in respect to possible appointments, exercise caution, wisdom and maturity, as long as a team or potential team was continuously being considered in preparation for a possible formation of Government. In this way, the Umbrella leadership is assuredly ready to Govern under all scenarios. For instance, should the need arise for a coalition Government, the Umbrella is equally prepared to deploy the right people including accommodating luminaries from outside the Umbrella’s immediate political circle (including members of BCP) as well as roping in technocrats from outside politics, provided these are the most effective candidates for bringing about our proposed policy agenda. In our framework, we also propose that some of the key positions would have to be first approved by Parliament once the President has made nominations (although this may not be immediately applicable). This means our approach is quite different from the Westminster approach being adopted by BCP’s shadow minister mechanism. The one approach being different from the other does not imply that one route is bad and the other is good. On the contrary, in this particular case, both the Umbrella and the BCP are increasingly demonstrating that Botswana is on course for change, positive change. The BCP deserves credit for giving the country a glimpse of the type of people they intend to entrust the country’s stewardship should the opportunity arise. They have given citizens the opportunity to ponder about possibilities for their country. It is the citizens of Botswana, and only them that should be the judge of what they need and prefer. However, BCP’s announcement should not in any way take away either from them or from our intention to focus mainly on our plans for the new Government and how we wish to organize that Government. We are comfortable and confident that the pool of talent within and outside the Umbrella will be judiciously harnessed, and the best brought out of it, for the sake of our people. We encourage that members of our Umbrella Movement should never have to feel that our success as a Movement means our competitor, in this case the BCP, should perform poorly. On the contrary, our sense of excellence should cause us to celebrate the idea of competing with an organised “rival” than a disorganized one. That is the only way that we can, and indeed we will, build a great nation.
Posted on: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 21:07:20 +0000
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