Voting in Botswana’s parliamentary election started yesterday, with President Ian Khama expected to remain in power despite rising discontent over the economic state of the world’s biggest diamond producer.
The southern African nation has been hit by recession as a global slowdown cuts demand for diamonds, which account for close to 40 percent of the economy.
The crisis has forced Botswana, seen as one of Africa’s best-run countries with a history of budget surpluses and the region’s strongest currency, to plunge itself into debt.
PHOTO: AFP
GDP is widely forecast to shrink 10 percent, and the country had to borrow US$1.5 billion from the African Development Bank in June to plug a massive budget shortfall.
An independent electoral commission official told Reuters that voting had begun.
Fierce infighting is expected to reduce support for Khama’s ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) and help the opposition.
Khama has been in heated arguments with the BDP’s chairman and suspended the party’s secretary-general, Gomolemo Motswaledi, for allegedly undermining his authority.
The row has intensified charges of autocracy and populism against Khama, a UK-trained army lieutenant general who has said politics was never his first choice of career.
“Party politics is dirty and divisive by nature, and I haven’t yet discovered anything enjoyable about it,” Khama said in an interview with South Africa’s Financial Mail weekly.
While the feuding may cut support for the BDP, its main opposition, the Botswana National Front (BNF), does not have enough grassroots support to provide a serious challenge. It also has to contend with a splinter group, the Botswana Congress Party (BCP).
The BDP won 77.2 percent of the vote in the last election in 2004. In the recently dissolved parliament, it held 44 of the 57 seats, while the BNF had 12 and the BCP had one.
Many voters feel the economic crisis should not be directly blamed on the BDP, and few expect the BDP to lose control over the nation of 1.8 million people.
“I do not see any change in power. The BDP, although divided as it is, will still win this election,” said Lawrence Ookeditse, a political analyst at the University of Botswana.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un sent Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) greetings with what appeared to be restrained rhetoric that comes as Pyongyang moves closer to Russia and depends less on its long-time Asian ally. Kim wished “the Chinese people greater success in building a modern socialist country,” in a reply message to Xi for his congratulations on North Korea’s birthday, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported yesterday. The 190-word dispatch had little of the florid language that had been a staple of their correspondence, which has declined significantly this year, an analysis by Seoul-based specialist service NK Pro showed. It said
On an island of windswept tundra in the Bering Sea, hundreds of miles from mainland Alaska, a resident sitting outside their home saw — well, did they see it? They were pretty sure they saw it — a rat. The purported sighting would not have gotten attention in many places around the world, but it caused a stir on Saint Paul Island, which is part of the Pribilof Islands, a birding haven sometimes called the “Galapagos of the north” for its diversity of life. That is because rats that stow away on vessels can quickly populate and overrun remote islands, devastating bird
‘CLOSER TO THE END’: The Ukrainian leader said in an interview that only from a ‘strong position’ can Ukraine push Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘to stop the war’ Decisive actions by the US now could hasten the end of the Russian war against Ukraine next year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday after telling ABC News that his nation was “closer to the end of the war.” “Now, at the end of the year, we have a real opportunity to strengthen cooperation between Ukraine and the United States,” Zelenskiy said in a post on Telegram after meeting with a bipartisan delegation from the US Congress. “Decisive action now could hasten the just end of Russian aggression against Ukraine next year,” he wrote. Zelenskiy is in the US for the UN
A 64-year-old US woman took her own life inside a controversial suicide capsule at a Swiss woodland retreat, with Swiss police on Tuesday saying several people had been arrested. The space-age looking Sarco capsule, which fills with nitrogen and causes death by hypoxia, was used on Monday outside a village near the German border. The portable human-sized pod, self-operated by a button inside, has raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland. Active euthanasia is banned in the country, but assisted dying has been legal for decades. On the same day it was used, Swiss Department of Home