Opposition leaders dismiss Khama’s address The opposition parties, the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) have slammed president Lt Gen Ian Khama’s State of the Nation Address delivered this week saying it lacks dynamism. They said separately but concurrently that what is in the speech is what they were already familiar with and therefore, the statement offers nothing new. UDC Secretary General, Mr. Gomolemo Motswaledi told the Weekend Post in an interview this week that, the statement, save for a few details for 2013, was a cut and paste from the previous years. He said, “except for a few credible details on performance since the last speech, the rest, up to about 75/80% was repetition in content (letter and spirit).” Motswaledi stated that, “It provided no answers to the key challenges of Botswana today; it was lazy from a responsiveness point of view; it takes Batswana for granted that they will take it as a speech from the president anyway without attending to its consequence.” Motswaledi, who doubles as Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) president continued to highlight that, “It fell short of a proper Presidential report to the nation on how we faired during the last performance year, what items are for carryover, what items punctuate success, what is the state of the economy and key economic factors such as labour, employment, industry, trade, key development projects and development contacts, general performance of government, parastatal sector and the private sector - all in a manner that ushers us into appreciating the performance year we are getting into.” In fact, the UDC Secretary General stated that the nation needs to know the outcome of the blacklisting promised in the last address, as well as failures in the current project management arrangement even before pronouncing the new department on project planning and management. He further said that “We also deserve, for the sake of completing the story, the state of the Dams, the stadia, the Airport and Morupule B where Chinese contractors were involved and for a sincere and honest appraisal on what went wrong and costs involved.” Various initiatives, he said, on the youth need to be looked at in terms of their relative absorption into real jobs, a forecast will also be useful, so that sustainability and value add are also measured. For his part, BCP President Dumelang Saleshando said that the speech has not changed from last year’s address. He said it lacks dynamism in it. “The president tells us what we already know, instead of new ways of doing things getting into the future,” Saleshando lamented. He said that the government is running out of ideas. Saleshando mentioned that he thought the president will basically review the past 5 years in the statement, in terms of what he has achieved and impact in the previous addresses, how other areas were not managed and how he will actually pursue them going forward. “The government sometimes says they do not want a programme, just for them to later bring the same programme back in a different name. They stopped ALDEP, and came up with ISPAAD which is virtually the same. Namola Leuba was discarded and similar programme in the name of Ipelegeng was introduced, which according to me are the same. I hope they are not looking for new name for Tirelo Sechaba in the meantime,” Saleshando said.
Posted on: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 08:07:48 +0000
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