Botswana governing party expected to win elections

GABORONE, Botswana — Botswana’s governing party is expected to prevail over a divided opposition in Friday’s elections despite added pressure on leaders in the world’s largest diamond-producing country amid the global recession.

Even the opposition, which warns that one-party rule is being entrenched at the expense of democracy, doesn’t expect victory against a party that has been in power since Botswana won independence from Britain in 1966.

The Botswana Democratic Party won 44 of 57 seats in the last elections held in 2004, with the remaining 13 seats split between the Botswana National Front and the Botswana Congress Party.

Dumenlang Saleshando, spokesman of the Botswana Congress Party, predicted the BDP would slip this year but remain the majority party in parliament. Akanyang Magama, a member of parliament from the Botswana Front, said the governing party benefited from the opposition’s fragmentation.

Botswana, one of Africa’s most politically and economically stable countries, is the size of Texas and sparsely populated. It might be best known in the West as the setting of Alexander McCall Smith’s “No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency” novels and HBO TV series.

Botswana suffers from high levels of poverty and unemployment, and the worldwide recession has dampened global appetites for its diamonds. The country’s GDP shrank by 20 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the 2009 African Economic Outlook.

Opposition parliamentarian Magama says a record number of 18-to 29-year-olds have registered to vote.

“I think that these people want change because they are the hardest hit by unemployment,” he said.

Former President Festus Mogae stepped down last year even before the end of his second term, when the constitution required him to leave office. That allows his vice president, Seretse Ian Khama, to run as an incumbent in Friday’s vote.

Khama, a former army commander, is the son of the country’s first president after independence and has considerable support because of his late father’s popularity.

The opposition, however, has tried to paint Khama as a divisive figure whose military background did not prepare him to lead a democracy.

Opposition parliamentarian Magama points to Khama’s establishment of a Directorate of Intelligence Services and says it could be a tool to repress dissent.

Magama also said he is concerned by an increase in police killings of suspects since Khama took power in April 2008. Since then, eight suspects have been killed, compared to a total of 15 in the five years before Khama assumed power.

Khama’s government has repeatedly denied responsibility for police killings and dismissed allegations that the new directorate of intelligence services has a hidden agenda.

Comma Serema, the executive secretary of the governing party, called Magama’s concerns “nonsensical.”

The criticisms contrast with an international reputation that Khama secured when he was among the few leaders in the region to condemn state-sponsored political violence in neighboring Zimbabwe and call for internationally supervised elections.

Vincent Seretse, who has led the governing party’s election campaign, said it expects to win 70 percent of the vote.

According to the Independent Electoral Commission, a record 723,617 people have registered to vote — 243,833 of them between the ages of 18 and 29. Botswana has a population of about 1.8 million.