Keen interest in national poll

Botswana’s governing party – in power for almost six decades – is trying to pull off a trick in Wednesday’s general election by using a phrase normally associated with long-suffering opposition groups. BBC News reports that the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) is calling for ‘change’. ‘Let’s change together and build prosperity for all,’ President Mokgweetsi Masisi wrote in the manifesto. Although analysts say the outcome of the election is hard to predict, the BDP has won handsome parliamentary majorities at the 11 elections since independence in 1966. The BDP has been credited with overseeing a peaceful and dramatic transformation of a poor country, with only a few kilometres of tarred roads at independence, into a place where average living standards are among the highest on the continent.

Full BBC News report