28 Nov 2013

President Lt Gen. Seretse Khama Ian Khama’s State-of-the-Nation Address was a ‘very’ comprehensive address that covered all bases and gave a lot of detail, trade and industry minister, Ms Dorcas Makgato-Malesu has said.

Responding to President Khama’s address, Ms Makgato-Malesu expressed disappointment on what the majority of opposition MPs said about the speech, especially the statements that were made by leader of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) in Parliament and also Lobatse MP, Mr Nehemiah Modubule and Botswana Congress Party leader and also Gaborone Central MP, Mr Dumelang Saleshando.

The President’s statement, Ms Makgato-Malesu said, was consistent with the previous statements that were made in the house, linked to the various reports that were periodically brought into Parliament from time to time and also in alignment with government’s development plans.

Therefore she said “anyone who had any intention of seeing, any intention of understanding, any intention of analysing, any intention of hearing and any intention of listening would have seen that this was a very comprehensive statement.”

She said the remarks that were made by opposition legislators, when responding to the President’s address, showed that they resisted the truth and the country’s development agenda. Botswana’s economy, when compared to the rest of the World and mindful of the fact that it’s a small economy and a young democracy, Ms Makgato-Malesu said “we have held our own, we have done well, our economy has done better than Europe, and our economy has done better than a number of countries in the Euro zone.”

This she said was despite the fact that “our economy is dependent on them. That should be saying to you that, if we can do better than those that have been at it for much longer than us, there must be something that we are doing right.

The very plan that is being denounced must be doing something that is right.” Ms Makgato-Malesu said when the rest of the World was going through a recession, a number of countries were unable to withstand the recession, except Botswana.

“We were able to stand our own. Yes we struggled like any economy, but we were able to pull through. We never went into the negative; we went into the positive, despite the hardships that were being thrown at us,” she added. ENDS