BWEEKEND COMMENT: KHAMA ADMINISTRATION AND PERCEPTIONS OF DEMOCRACY AND THE RULE OF LAW “These decisions I have been making with advice and discussions with Cabinet are based on my and the Vice President and Ministers interactions with Batswana through Kgotla meetings and walkabouts where they tell me and them how they want their lives improved. Such decisions are based on such consultation and nothing else. For as long as I am in office I will continue to do it this way, because that is the meaning of Democracy.” - President Khama (4/4/14) In its latest annual human rights reports for some 200 countries and territories around the world, the U.S. State Department had this to say about the role of the police and security apparatus in a) Sweden and b) Botswana (spot the difference): a) Civilian authorities maintained effective control over the national police and the Security Service, and government authorities had effective mechanisms to investigate and punish abuse and corruption. There were no reports of impunity involving the security forces during the year. b) Civilian authorities maintained effective control over the BPS, army, and DIS, and the government had effective mechanisms to investigate and punish abuse and corruption. There were no reports of impunity involving security forces during the year. The human rights country report further observes that “the constitution and law provide citizens the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right through periodic, free, and fair elections based on universal suffrage,” while further noting that there were: • no reports the government or its agents committed an unlawful killing during the reporting year. • no reports of politically motivated disappearances. • no reports of political prisoners or detainees. • no government restrictions on access to the internet or credible reports the government monitored e-mail or internet chat rooms. • no government restrictions on academic freedom or cultural events. Interested readers can read the whole report for themselves online Of course some will dismiss the American report as whitewash, notwithstanding the fact that last month there were those who were quick to highlight Survival International’s characterisation of the same document as being somehow “damning” to our country. No doubt some would also wish to dismiss the findings of the 2014 World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index, which ranked Botswana as first in Africa and 25th in the world, while noting that: “the country continues to enjoy effective systems of checks and balances, including a fairly independent judiciary and a free press. Corruption remains minimal and all branches of government operate effectively.” Then there is the 2013 Global Democracy Index, where our country is ranked 30th in the world, with an overall score of 7.85 being just below France (7.88) and above Italy (7.74). The Democracy Index further breaks down the overall state of each country’s governance according various categories, with our country obtaining near perfect scores for Electoral Process and Pluralism (9.77) and Civil Liberties (9.41). There is also this past Thursday’s release by leading international risk management firm Aon Plc of their 2014 Political and Terrorism Risk maps, which further confirmed Botswana as a haven of peace and good governance. On the political, including economic and regulatory, risk map we numbered among the top five non-OECD countries with as medium to low risk in all categories. Confronted by the seemingly endless flow of such findings, the tendency on the part of some is to continue to dismiss such studies as the product of out of touch foreigners, notwithstanding the fact that most of the surveys do in fact measure local perceptions. This is entirely the case with respect to our number one position in Afrobarometer’s 2014 Transparent and Accountable Governance Index of 34 African countries, in which we were the only country that qualified as being “very open”. The same survey also ranked public perceptions as to whether heads of state were operating within the law. In this respect 75% of local respondents agreed that President Khama never or rarely ignored courts of law in the country, while only 8% were of the view that he often or always ignored the courts. The existence of such polling data by Gallup as well as Afrobarometer provides a context for the President’s top position in last year’s African Leadership Index and his 2011 “Justitia Statesman of the Year Award” for his promotion of human rights at home and abroad, as well as this week’s announcement that African Leadership Magazine has named him “Southern African Personality of the Year Award.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Apr 2014 12:08:19 +0000
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