Gearing up for the election

With only 10 days to go before Botswana holds its seventh general elections, womens groups are concerned that out of the more than 140 parliamentary candidates, only 11 are women - despite the fact that they represent at least 52 percent of the population. Of the four main political parties that will be contesting the elections, only the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has the most women candidates - six out of 40. Some commentators, though, see this as an encouraging development. “In the last parliament there were only four women MPs all of whom were BDP members, two of whom were specially appointed by the president in terms of the constitution,” a woman’s rights activist told IRIN on Tuesday. She added that there is no guarantee that the 11 women candidates would get enough votes to take them to parliament. Emang Basadi, a woman’s rights advocacy group, in a statement to the media on this week blamed the tradition of male dominance over women as the reason for the negligible representation of women in the legislature. “Many women are willing to stand for election at both party and national levels, but tradition requires that married women should seek the approval of their husbands before standing for elected positions. This approval is not always forthcoming,” said the statement. The statement added that political campaigns are expensive in terms of money and time invested and most of the time women did not have control over household income. The four main parties contesting the election are the BDP, the Botswana Congress Party (BCP), the Botswana National Front (BNF), and the Botswana Alliance Movement (BAM).