Direct election of president revisited

MICHAEL DINGAKE | Tuesday February 26, 2008 00:00

The assassination of Kennedy took place in 1963 and Lyndon Johnson was installed as his successor in terms of the American constitution. All constitutions to my knowledge have a similar provision for a smooth transition in case of unforeseen contingencies. We need to be aware of that.

What we also need to know is that the US constitution did not empower LB Johnson to vest his Vice President with a constitutional right to appoint his successor. Our constitution on the other hand empowers the president to crown a successor! Remember Mogae said he could dissolve Parliament if his Vice President was not endorsed by MPs? 

In the Sunday Standard Christian Makgala's piece deals with Masire's disclosures about the influence of Kennedy's assassination on the 'automatic succession' amendment in our constitution. He makes the valid point that this amendment came 34 years after the Dallas event!

The truth of the matter is that automatic succession, the brainchild of Sir Ketumile was more of a self-serving device in the Masire legacy. He made it one of the conditions, a negotiation chip, for his involuntary retirement. Masire had done fairly well as national president and as leader of the ruling party.

At the time he was elbowed out, his party was consumed by internecine strife. To preempt the fatal decline of his party, Sir Ketumile proposed a way out - namely, that he nominate his personal choice for the next president, Festus Mogae, who was above factions. Quite a plausible demarche by Masire.

The fear of instability at presidential transition in the BDP, obviously is not motivated by fear of national instability but by fear of party instability. Batswana should be careful, not to base their criteria on what is good for the nation on sectarian considerations. The nation should come before any one of its many segments' interests: ethnic, political, religious or business.

Another argument by the BDP camp, as articulated by Foreign Minister Mompati Merafhe is: '..If it ain't broken, why fix it..?' That is to say our constitution has served us (the BDP) well as it stands and therefore does not need to be tampered with. The BDP forgets, democracy is not a static event but a dynamic process in which change is an unchanging element.

Moreover, they forget that we relegated bogosi, our tried traditional government system, to the museum when we adopted the democratic government system. From the traditional system to the modern democratic system is a drastic and dramatic departure projecting the ideal dynamism we must continue to nurture for our forward movement.

Today we have taken to democracy like fish to water, to the extent that we can claim without fear of contradiction, that traditional bogosi system and modern democracy are one and the same thing!

From election of a president by the party or parliament to an election of a president by an outgoing president is a backward step however you look at it. We should be moving from the election of the president by a section of the population to an election of the president by the whole people. That is what we should be doing to democratize our system more, instead of retrogressing to an appointment of such a powerful person by a single person dripping in sectarianism.

Listening to Masa-a-sele talk-show, on the morning of February 18, 2008 I was sorely impressed by how much ordinary Batswana swallow whatever is said by the ruling party officials. The refrain from the majority callers who were against the direct election of the president echoed what Sir Ketumile Masire and BDP MPs said during the debate of MP Magama's motion in Parliament on February 15, 2008.

The callers gave no cogent original reasons why Batswana should not elect the presidency directly. All they kept on repeating ad nauseam, was that electing a president directly will result in turmoil (Go tla tsosa dikgoberego).

One would have loved to know why and how; unfortunately that was not forthcoming in the emotive two- or three-sentence arguments from the antagonists. A few stretched their imagination to venture the preposterous suggestion that it was the system of direct election of president that caused the current situation of violent conflict in Kenya!

The obvious indication that the violent aftermath in the Kenya elections was a result of cheating by Mwai  Kibaki and his party, was glossed over and the automatic succession provision, was presented as a cure-all for political turmoil and automatic harbinger for stability and peace for political transitions.

The question before Batswana is, 'is it more democratic to have a president appointed by one person, which is what prevails under the automatic succession or to have him or her elected by an indirect method by the political party which wins the elections, or to have our president elected by all Batswana with the right to vote?'

Obviously one person rule, is dictatorship, which we all abhor; a few people's rule is oligarchy, which is more or less the same  system as bogosi, which we discarded in 1966 when we became independent, or do we prefer democracy: government of the people by the people for the people, the system we have embraced ?

Do we want to move forward or backward in our political development. The question need to be answered honestly to enable ourselves to move forward in confidence as a people guided by principle.

A president elected by all the people in spite of his political party affiliation will largely view national issues on a bi-partisan or non-partisan prism unlike the president elected by a party who will be inclined to view things from a partisan angle. Party-elected presidents tend to interchange party with nation/government. It is currently the big dilemma of the ANC in SA. The tendency may not be akin to a one-person dictatorship but it definitely is, party-dictatorship.