Cabinet should respect Parliament

| Wednesday July 7, 2010 00:00

The minister effectively told legislators that a forensic audit report into Debswana could not be made available to them because it contained 'sensitive and confidential information'. While the minister is spot on in saying revelation of this report in Parliament would be sub judice, given the ongoing criminal matter involving charges of corruption and mal-administration at Debswana, the entire affair fortifies what the August House and the press have long known. In its dealings with De Beers, it would appear the executive has vigorously attempted to sideline and alienate the legislature. While in other administrations, oversight committees are created in Parliament to consider arrangements with private sector players, government has often relied on its own limited expertise to interface with entities such as De Beers.

Thus, effectively, the executive binds the nation to various complex contracts without the input of the citizenry through their elected representatives in Parliament.  The continent is littered with terrifying examples of countries whose citizens have found themselves mortgaged to multinational corporations who have used their guile and expertise to hoodwink governments into inescapable contracts. These examples mirror the national incredulity that greeted news of the sordid dealings between De Beers and the government earlier in the year, a relationship and situation that could have been ameliorated through regulation by a Parliamentary oversight committee.

Over the decades, critics have argued that Botswana was short-changed in its initial and subsequent agreements with De Beers, due to a lack of expertise. These critics point to the late establishment of the diamond cutting and polishing, a sector that currently employs about 3,000 people, the majority of them citizens. It must be noted that government cannot possibly have the expertise to enter into various modern and complex arrangements with the private sector. Even when it outsources this expertise, its bureaucracy makes supervision of the contractor's obligations and deliverables difficult.

Unlike the parliament of old dominated by legislators from agricultural and rural backgrounds, our burgeoning democracy has a lively, technocratic National Assembly, representing various sectors from IT, mining, engineering, financial services and others. This National Assembly has the capability to oversee any contracts the executive wishes to enter into. Establishing this oversight will improve transparency and accountability, even when the supervising parliamentarians are bound to silence by non-disclosure clauses. This publication therefore urges the executive - as a start - to engage the National Assembly in its ongoing negotiations with De Beers towards a new sales agreement.  This would ensure a contract, which can stand the test of public scrutiny and inquisition, through the inclusion of the public's elected representatives.

                                                               Today's thought

                                                    'Men are respectable only as they respect'

                                                              - Ralph Waldo Emerson