Live broadcasts of parliamentary debates are long overdue!

Michael Dingake | Tuesday June 9, 2015 15:18

It therefore seems plausible to say  it must be the MPs who for some unknown reason are against their voices being heard over the wires or their gesticulations  viewed on Btv. As a former MP I should know better why there are no live broadcasts of Parliamentary debates when our counterparts in new democracies enjoy hearing  the voices of their MPs  arguing for their interests and aspirations in the House of Representatives.

 Botswana was one of the first three African countries to go for multiparty democracy when she became  independent in 1966. The other two were Mauritius and Senegal. The rest of the newly independent states were one-party states. Progressive then she was a darling of Western democracies. She had rightly earned herself the sobriquet, ‘the shining example of democracy.’ In truth, the shininess of the country was exaggerated. It was based on the fact that her neighbour South Africa,  claimed a bizarre kind of democracy which excluded the majority from the poll while her fellow-African newly-arrived at independence, spurned the indisputable tenet of multi-partism  as the sine qua non of the democracy concept, by adopting a single-party system of which did not hold regular five-yearly general elections. The fact that the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was so to speak, the police officer, the prosecutor and the judge since the process of elections was conducted by the Permanent Secretary to the President who was the supervisor of the elections and the adjudicator of the results, through the same Office  - in other words performing the exercise of the general elections from start to finish – the regular elections counted for nothing and only helped the ruling BDP to master the art of winning the elections without pause.

It is true that in the land of the blind one-eyed man is king. Botswana thus shone and shone for a long time in the African context until recently when the new crop of democracies emerged on the scene. These new democracies have since upped the democratic standards: IEC’s have become a permanent feature of the elections process; constitutional courts are part of the constitution to better enforce observance of the constitution;  independent institutions to promote democracy have sprouted: The Gender Commission, The Public protector, The Human Rights Commission etc etc. The new democracies have arrived, to remind Botswana that democracy is a process not an event. Human development is an ongoing dynamic process, the social systems which nurture this process must be dynamic to keep in step with the rhythmic dynamism. It is time for Botswana to wake up and smell the coffee. Democracy isn’t a  bottleneck where things whirl around aimlessly, it is a process where motion, competition, adaptations jostle for space; there are challenges, there are things to do for the good of the ever-demanding humanity; any part of humanity that lags behind betrays the course of the entire humanity to shine more than the stars!

Democracy, the government of the people, by the people, for the people still leaves much to be desired in Botswana. From shining example of democracy, an overcast and eclipsed example of democracy is discernible. Botswana began to mark time, now she is back-pedaling! Who may be responsible for this state of historic national degeneration and abysmal subtraction? In the late 1960s when the country attained the ‘shining example of democracy’ label, Botswana was in visionary hands, hands of luminaries imbued with patriotism – love of the country, specifically love of posterity – the ultimate inheritors; the founding fathers and mothers were men and women inspired by the country’s  legendary peace and tranquility. While Africa was marching breast-out led by Kwame of the Gold Coast soon to be Ghana, Bechuanaland was agitated to counter the moribund Union of South Africa leaders, next door whose mission was sending the indigenous population back to the caves; Botswana looked ahead, with focus on the birth of a new era with vitality and elastic step of a vibrant democratic element!  Indeed one is tempted to believe, what inspired Botswana founding fathers first and foremost was a democratic model contrasting diametrically with the regressive models embarked upon by white-ruled neighbours who were trying hard to turn the democracy clock back. On the one hand the experiment by the African colleagues while offering something different were not offering anything with better quality! 

Question still is, why no live- broadcasts in Parliament? Who is to blame? Is it the public discouraging MPs against live debates? As a member of the public I can answer for the public with an emphatic, No! Is it the President? In spite of his unchecked powers, answer is No, unless he be a veritable bully. He can’t have his SONAs broadcast live by parliament and forbid MPs right to broadcast live from their premises! It doesn’t add up! Through elimination, we conclude it’s the MPs who don’t want live broadcasts!  What is more we have never heard them raise the issue, or have we? I don’t remember live broadcasts being made an issue in the Seventh Parliament in which I served, nor in the eighth, ninth, 10th or the current 11th