MOSCOW, October 26 (RIA Novosti) – The party of Botswana’s President Ian Khama has won a majority in the state’s parliament, ensuring a second five-year term for the 61-year old national leader, the BBC reported on Sunday.
Khama’s Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was reported to win 33 out of 57 seats in the country’s parliament on Saturday, giving it the simple majority it needed to form a government. The Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) ranked second with 14 seats, while the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) took third place with only 2 seats, according to the Washington Post.
The opposition performed better than during the 2009 elections, when the BDP received 45 of the 57 seats in parliament. However, the opposition’s electoral campaign was apparently not convincing enough to attract more followers and overcome the country’s president, who has held office for almost half a century.
Some of Khama’s detractors have portrayed him internationally as an authoritarian politician and a person trying “to impose puritanical discipline on the nation of 2 million”, the Guardian notes. However, his contribution to the development of the country’s diamond industry has significantly reduced poverty and allowed Botswana to invest in the country’s public sector. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the country’s HDI value for 2013 was 0.683, making it the most developed country in continental sub-Saharan Africa. Between 1980 and 2013, the country’s HDI increased from 0.470 to 0.683, according to US-based National Public Radio.
“I always say to [journalists] look again at the rankings and look at how they’ve been improving since I took office. If I were a dictator, we wouldn’t enjoy those rankings”, Khama announced in a statement, published by the Guardian. According to the World Bank, “The country has a mature democracy, with free and fair elections held regularly…the constitution provides for fundamental rights and freedoms.”
