Parley did well on BIUST
Mmegi Editor | Tuesday March 14, 2017 11:54
The motion was a response to the recent closure of the BCL Mine, which resulted in over 5,000 jobs being lost. The motion was supported by members from both sides of the floor, among them Cabinet ministers.
It is sad that when this University was still at conception stage in the early 2000s, some members of the House, especially from opposition, had called on Government to build the University in Selebi-Phikwe warning of the impending closure of BCL.
The calls fell on deaf ears as the ruling party insisted that BIUST should be built in Palapye. More than a decade later, and a few years after the University opened to students, the same Government agrees that indeed Selebi-Phikwe is facing a bleak future.
Nonetheless, the adoption of the motion is most welcome, since it was supported by all members of the House after they had weighed in on its importance to the nation.
However, Government processes are slow and at times provoking. We hope that once all the processes have been conducted, probably a decade from today, the BIUST campus will ultimately open. This motion is clear indication that if all parties in the House could put aside their political differences, this nation would be more attractive to foreign investors and be prosperous.
It is disappointing to look back and realise just how much we have lost because politicians would not support an idea coming from the other side of the floor. This, in spite of how important, self-explanatory and beneficial the idea may have promised to be. We have seen laws and policies being formulated, some of which even the ruling party members admitted though not publicly that they were not going to serve the nation any good.
Right now, we are currently faced with prospects of a law that seeks to increase the age limit of Judges to 80-years-old, when we all know that such a law would not benefit the nation in any positive way. Protests accompanied by advice from the opposition have been thrown out of the window, and some individuals are determined to put the law in place by hook or by crook.
It is a serious offence to amend the Constitution just to suit the wishes of a few individuals at the expense of the nation at large. This is not different from a ruling party that amends the Constitution to increase Presidential terms for their boss.
Working together in Parliament has potential to reap rewards for the entire nation, as this motion has demonstrated. Either this, or it is another tactic by the Powers-that-be to distract the nation from the Court of Appeal amendment Bill’s sticky issue.
Today’s thought
“Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.”
– Noam Chomsky