Opposition Members of Parliament (MPs) have expressed dissatisfaction with the way the last session of parliament was conducted, saying it was unruly and was ran extremely unprofessionally.
“It is very disappointing to some of us. We are serious minded politicians who want to bring change to this country and improve the lives of Batswana. We sacrifice a lot of our time to bring a better living standard for Batswana, so when I get to parliament I expect the respect for the intelligence I bring to parliament, which party you are from should be irrelevant because when we get to parliament we are supposed to rise above political divide; we are supposed to bring ideas to supplement the system that is already in place,” says Mohammed Khan, Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) MP for Molepolole North.
Khan also thinks that President Khama does not take Members of Parliament as seriously as he should, because he tends run away from debates, “As far as I’m concerned he is a coward, a political coward because he doesn’t even attend our political debates, why? The President doesn’t take us seriously as MPs; BDP also does not care about what ideas we have to contribute. I am very frustrated and angry personally at the way this country is run. We have a president who comes and gives the nation of address (SONA), but instead of the SONA he comes with gimmicks to parliament saying he is going to bring things likes of the Economic stimulus package (ESP), another name for fast tracking development projects that have been backlogged because of incompetence,” he said.
Yesterday (Monday) the Speaker of the House Gladys Kokorwe announced that out of 372 received questions, only 177 were answered in the just ended session, something which Botswana Congress Party (BCP) MP for Selibe Phikwe West, Dithapelo Keorapetse says was not surprising since it was the shortest parliament they had, “Productively it was fine, the problem was the quality of answers provided by Ministers. Most Ministers are evasive and sometimes even lie. They leave out information they feel might embarrass government, and when you ask supplementary questions they even say they are not the questions originally asked; which goes to show that they do not have information readily available,” he argued.
“As we speak MP Ignitious Moswaane has lined up 25 motions, which means this whole session- parliament was seized with his motions alone, so this problem is caused by our standing orders because of the way they are structured and this is a problem for us; this means parliament in this session and the next one is likely to be seized with motions from just one person.” Keorapetse said, adding that they preoccupied with Moswaane’s motions on Fridays, some of which he says are useless.
Meanwhile, Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) MP for Shashe West, Fedelis Molao said they were happy with the way parliament went, “This parliament was by and large to do with the SONA. That was the only big issue that was done this session. Ordinarily, BDP is satisfied with how it went. We had a loaded SONA which we believe those that do not agree with us should have offered an alternative of what we should do. We have laid out how we are going to address challenges through the ESP and that was the main issue. Apart from the unruly behavior from some of the MPs, parliament went smoothly,” he said.