Election officials in Botswana were counting ballots on Sunday following nationwide polls that were expected to see the party in power since independence remain at the helm of the Southern African country, one of the most stable on the continent.
President Festus Mogae’s Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which has governed the diamond-rich country since it broke away from British rule in 1966, is set to win a comfortable majority of the 57 seats in Parliament.
Voters went to the polls on Saturday, patiently waiting in early-morning queues under a blazing sun to take part in Botswana’s ninth multiparty elections.
”We are all waiting anxiously for the results,” said a spokesperson for the Independent Elections Commission after a night of ballot-counting.
By early morning on Sunday, the BDP had won one seat in the Francistown West constituency and counting continued, the spokesperson said.
A poor agriculture-based nation at independence, Botswana has become a middle-income country since the 1967 discovery of diamonds, which has kept the economy sparkling as the world’s leading producer of the raw stones.
The Southern African country of 1,7-million people is also struggling with the world’s second-highest Aids infection rate, after Swaziland, at 37,3%, according to the United Nations Aids agency.
The outcome of the vote could serve as a wake-up call for the opposition, dogged by infighting and splits that have prevented it from mounting a credible challenge to the BDP.
Mogae, an Oxford-trained economist who has taken a leading role in the fight against Aids, has said he will step down in 2008, a year before the next elections, in line with the Constitution that limits the president’s time in office to 10 years.
He plans to pass the baton to Vice-President Ian Khama, the son of Botswana’s founding president Seretse Khama. — Sapa-AFP