16 Oct 2017

Speaker of the National Assembly, Ms Gladys Kokorwe says despite the constitution allowing Members of Parliament (MPs) to engage in both English and Setswana as official and national languages, she constantly encourages MPs to converse in Setswana so they can be well understood by the majority of the populace especially their electorate.

Speaking during ‘Taking Parliament To The People’ initiative at Serowe main kgotla recently, Ms Kokorwe said it would not be unprecedented for MPs to debate at Parliament, converse with electorate and address various media in Setswana as it has become an international practice.

As part of her yearning for positive changes, Ms Kokokorwe said she wanted to implement positive changes at the National Assembly as well as on members.

She said it was one of her goals to ensure that the constitution and Parliament Standing Orders be translated into Setswana for better understanding by Batswana as not all were conversant with the English language.

This, she said, would allow a majority of the voters to get a chance to see, judge and appreciate inputs of their elected political representatives at work.

Ms Kokorwe also said she was hard at work to ensure that Parliament was broadcast live on Botswana Television before the end of her term as the Speaker of the National Assembly in 2019 to help voters appreciate their representatives at work.

 ‘Taking Parliament To The People’ tour that has seen the Speaker of the National Assembly and staff tour 43 constituencies since 2015, engages voters on Parliament, MPs, various operations of legislators and the committees they are allocated to in their oversight function.

She also encouraged electorate to visit constituency offices to keep abreast on issues of parliament and its operations. She also encouraged constituency office bearers to remain apolitical and be receptive to various members of the society.  Ms Kokorwe told the electorate that it was their role to feed legislators with ideas that could be used to further their developmental agenda.

She said constituency offices should be armed with documents such as hansard, constitution amongst others in order to help inform members of community.
In his welcome remarks, Bangwato Regent, kgosi Sediegeng Kgamane expressed happiness at the initiative, saying it was crucial to informing electorate about the Parliament operations. Ends