It is fair to posit that the presidency has seen and handled its fair share of crises. But I think the greatest of these has been a crisis within itself as an institution with utmost power and responsibility. The litmus test of an institution endowed with so much goodwill, is how it evolves and learns to serve in the interest of the people it presides over. The country’s nation builders did not spell this out explicitly, but they trusted that the occupants of the Office would preside over the important process of its transformation to be a responsive, ethical institution that oversees the country’s economic, legal, social, and political development. They trusted that the Office would evolve with time to be agile, better, faster, more inclusive, and stronger.
The intuitive answer to the question of whether the presidency was built and capacitated for crisis is a yes! The Constitution of the Republic crafted the presidency against the backdrop of an existential development and economic crisis. Botswana was a poor state with limited resources to put bread on the table and survive the economic hardships of that time. The Constitution therefore gave life to the Office of the President. It also set out to define the role of the President as well as its powers and responsibilities. Rightly so, within a system of shared powers, the presidency does indeed have the best tools at its disposal to operate in any context, including in an emergency. It was also equipped with offices and institutions that must support the presidency to do its job. The nation builders must have envisioned the unprecedented nature of the job and the rough terrains it would have to navigate in periods of uncertainty, even if it meant exercising ‘supraconstitutional powers’ and deferring checks and balances as we have seen.
