Botswana, gears up for elections
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Jean Batsy
GABORONE - Africa's economic star Botswana is heading for elections this week that are set to be won by the party of President Festus Mogae, who has led a multi-front offensive on Aids in the world's second-worst affected country.
While the outcome is seen as a foregone conclusion, the question mark hanging over the nationwide polls on Saturday is whether Botswanans themselves will be able to muster the enthusiasm to go out and vote.
"We are going to win these elections - that's what I have come here to tell you," Mogae, an economist trained at Britain's Oxford University, told supporters at a rally of his Botwana Democratic Party, which has been in power since independence in 1966.
Mogae is appealing for a strong turnout to win a clear mandate for a final five-year term that will serve to shape his legacy as the third president of this nation of 1.6 million people.
Botswana, the world's leading producer of raw diamonds, has under the governing party used its mineral wealth to propel the southern African country from a poor agriculture-based nation at independence to a middle-income country.
Per capita GDP in 2003 stood at $3,800 in 2003, one of the highest in Africa.
A former British protectorate called Bechuanaland, Botswana has also enjoyed uninterrupted civilian rule since independence - again in stark contrast to other African nations plagued by war and where rich resources have profited a corrupt few.
Despite a buoyant multi-party democracy and mineral wealth geared to development, Botswana is grappling with the world's second highest Aids rate after Swaziland, with 37.3% of its population living with HIV and Aids.
But easy access to life-prolonging anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) coupled with Mogae's personal commitment to the fight against Aids - he has undergone testing to set an example for his countrymen - has left the opposition with little ammunition to attack the government's record.
After taking over the presidency from Sir Ketumile Masire in 1998, Mogae, 65, quickly seized on the Aids pandemic as the most pressing challenge facing his country, even going so far as to say that Botswanans faced "extinction" from HIV.
Mogae never misses an opportunity to mention Aids in his speeches, talking openly about the need for safe sex and for Botswanans to know their HIV status.
In the runup to the vote, the fractured and weak opposition has seized on poverty and unemployment, officially at 24%.
"The government is reacting a bit too late in so far as the Aids problem is concerned. How can someone take medication on an empty stomach?" says Paul Rantao, a candidate of the Botswana National Front, the largest opposition party.
University of Botswana lecturer Happy Sephambe says the campaign has been bogged down in political squabbling.
"We have real life pressing issues and politicians talk about trivial issues, about what the other one has failed to do, without stating what they would do if voted into power," says Sephambe.
Seven parties are fielding candidates in the elections to 57 seats in parliament, the ninth polls to be held in Botswana. Parliament then elects the president if none of the parties garner a majority of the vote.
Aside from Mogae, there are three other candidates for the presidency including lawyer Otsweletse Moupo from the Botswana National Front, who has also won the backing from two other parties - the Botswana Alliance Movement and the Botswana People's Party - to try to defeat the incumbent.
The other two long-shot candidates are lawyer Dick Bayford of the New Democratic Front and Otlaadisa Koosaletse of the Botswana Congress Party. A total of 552,890 voters are registered to cast ballots in the 2,179 polling stations set up throughout the country.
The electoral commission is to announce the results today and a presidential inauguration is scheduled for November 2. |
