Gaolathe in do-or-die for 'new Botswana'
Nnasaretha Kgamanyane | Friday February 15, 2019 12:21
When responding to the 2019-2020 Botswana Annual Budget Speech in Parliament recently, Gaolathe said there was need for a new Botswana that gives all people sustainable jobs and opportunities.
He added that the ultimate aim of their plan was to, regardless of the political party in power, create well paying jobs and opportunities for all people.
“We are in a current economic state of do-or-die, the likes of which we have never witnessed, and so many of our people are in a state of despair and anxiety about the future and that of their children’s. Our people wish to know if there is a way out of this morass, this economic state of do-or-die, they wish to know if there is some possibility, no matter how remote, to transform this economy so it can put all our people at work, and give them opportunities to feed their families and become the best they can be. They gleaned and searched for this possibility in the recent budget speech, but the answer lies in much more than any budget speech,” he said.
He also said that there was desperation, loss of hope about what can become of this nation, more especially in the streets of the ghettos and yards of the hamlets. Gaolathe added that there was a choice between refurbishment and renewal therefore he said he chose the building of a new Botswana. He said more people were not at work whilst many lived in poverty and appalling life conditions. He said the disparities in the material living conditions; wealth and income were extreme and alarming.
Gaolathe added that those conditions put together threaten social cohesion if not unity as a people. He said if they do not fix them, people would lose their character, sense of collective purpose and their happiness. He further said the current government system was not tailored to extract the best of out of the national budget. He said they could not pretend that their political institutions were fertile, inclusive or fortified enough to bring out the best in their resource allocation process.
“Our three arms of government are so ill-balanced and, out of both the constitutional script and tradition, accord the Executive Branch of government disproportionate powers. This creates a constitutionally legitimate dictatorship of the executive and disempowered legislature without neither the capacity nor the tools to provide meaningful oversight over executive. The Judiciary is only as independent as the attitude of Executive of the moment,” he said.
He said such institutional arrangement of their government breeds an attitude within government and among those who wield power within the Executive to abuse it because there are no serious institutional deterrents or checks and balances that is why the national coffers continue to bleed, and no one is able to give an estimated figure of those leakages.
In the mist of such serious corruption allegations, Gaolathe said this year’s budget should have indicated the Executive’s estimates of monies leaked over the last five or 10 years as a result of corruption.