Says measure would curtail sabotage of govt programmes by renegades
SESUPO RANTSIMAKO
FRANCISTOWN: a congress of the Botswana Democratic Party Youth Wing (BDPYW) has resolved to call on the mother body to reserve senior positions for political appointees in order to avoid sabotage and resistance from renegade officers.
Specifically the youth wing wants all senior government appointees selected from the party that has won the elections and forms the government. The positions identified include those of permanent secretaries, directors and managers.
Most importantly, appointments to key positions in the public sector should be based on qualifications and merit. In addition, tenure of office should be limited to specified time frames. “This would avoid the current set-up where the party has to struggle or double efforts to attain state power,” reads justification for the resolutions that will be presented to the next BDP national council for discussion.
Newly-elected Secretary General of BDPYW, Otsile Machona, told The Botswana Gazette in a subsequent interview that the young democrats had realised that the party’s good initiatives crafted for elections always suffer at implementation stage. “The finger points to people who hold senior government positions,” Machona said. “If these people were politically-appointed, the ruling party’s initiatives would be implemented without much difficulty because they would also want their party to stay in power.
“Our conviction as young democrats is that it is difficult to run the country with people who are against your initiatives. For government initiatives to be implemented, there is need to have people who subscribe to them driving their implementation. As with Members of Parliament, these positions should run for five years.”