This focus should be seen for the opportunity it is to rightly put onto the top of the political agenda issues of inherent importance that have previously been put on the back burner and generally dismissed as irrelevant to our nationhood. One such issue is the active promotion of the nuclei and extended family by the BDP as a possible panacea to our socio-economic problems. Such is the importance of the proposed undertaking that it should be granted its deserved status of a policy position of our party. We can no longer afford to consider the importance of the family with indifference and as an issue that can be dealt with on an ad hoc basis. Fortunately for us, our origins as a mass based politically party was intimately linked with the family institution and therefore our reconnection with it should not be a source of embarrassment or surprise. Moreover, our pre colonisation reverence of the family as a continent should inspire our new disposition and end any enduring disparaging comments about it. Unknown too many, our party's dwindling electoral fortune is in part intertwined with our current preoccupation with the attainment of growth economic measurements that are bereft of a social dimension. It is sad to admit that our party is increasingly abandoning its social democratic credentials and enthusiastically embracing the pure form of neoliberal orthodoxy as branded and sold by the Brentwood institutions, albeit voluntarily. There can be no better way for the BDP to affirm its commitment to alleviating the plight of the masses than to accentuate the family as a pillar of its domestic policy. Unlike a supportive family, economic constructs like the benefit system, no matter how hard they are touted, can never provide an equitable, satisfactory and sustainable solution to disparities within our society. The BDP needs as a matter of urgency to convey a clear and unambiguous message to the nation that it staunchly encourages and supports the family institution and that it will resolutely defend it from any threat, real or perceived. It needs to dispel any manifesting doubts about its continued desire to maintain its position as the vanguard of the aspirations and hopes of our people. This it can achieve by abandoning, not the family, but its newly adopted bias towards acute liberalisation and its newly discovered affinity for excessive macro economic indulgence. The abandonment of the family by the BDP will have the negative effect of eroding any remaining evidence that lends credence to its claim of being a human centred development champion. Economic gratification, important though as this is, doesn't and can never supersede the primary wish of the overwhelming majority of our people- that of having a healthy, happy and stable family. To maintain political ascendancy in this country, the BDP must demonstrate empathy to this wish. It must further demonstrate that it will not compromise with and pander to individualism and self-centredness. The BDP cannot afford to ignore its obligation to mirror the wishes of the masses. This implies that the BDP itself needs to be seen, both in orientation and persuasion, to be in conformance with the general desire and will of the nation. The BDP leadership needs to be an exemplar of good morality and acceptable behaviour and custodians of desirable public conduct. For the BDP to sever exemplary values from prudent leadership would be a damning indictment of its disdain disregard for the expectations of the nation. The BDP's serious mistake would be to relegate a holistic human centred developmental approach based on good morals and values to the periphery of our political agenda in favour of an obsessive inclination towards market economics and wholesale liberalisation. His constitutional right of association, choice and judgment not withstanding, it is desirable for Ian Khama to walk down the aisle and take his vows at the altar and leave no one in doubt that the BDP heeds the wishes, desires and hopes of the nation and is committed to the venerable institution of the family and exemplary moral and value based politics.
Thero T Gaadingwe
Gaborone
