{"id":47602,"date":"2019-10-24T10:10:48","date_gmt":"2019-10-24T02:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=47602"},"modified":"2019-10-24T10:10:50","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T02:10:50","slug":"botswana-awaits-results-in-cliffhanger-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/?p=47602","title":{"rendered":"Botswana awaits results in cliffhanger election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"About
About 931,000 of the country’s 2.2 million people are registered to vote in the parliamentary and local elections <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

GABORONE, Oct 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Botswana voted on Wednesday in a cliffhanger election set to test the decades-long dominance of the ruling party and challenge the country’s image of stability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The southern African nation’s 2 200 polling stations started closing at 17:00 GMT as many were still waiting in queues to cast their ballots in the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) spokesperson Osupile Maroba this would delay counting slightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Results are expected as early as Thursday evening. According to the IEC, the winner is declared once a party attains 29 parliamentary seats – the minimum requirement to form a government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP), which has ruled since independence from Britain in 1966, suffered a seismic jolt in May when former president Ian Khama renounced his hand-picked successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Khama stormed out after accusing his former deputy of autocracy and threw his weight behind the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC), once his fiercest critic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“It’s the toughest election we have had to fight,” Masisi told reporters after voting in his native village of Moshupa, 65km east of the capital Gaborone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“But you know I enjoy a test, I enjoy the challenge,” he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Masisi maintained that the BDP’s victory was “automatic”, but said he would concede and “retreat” into opposition if his party did “not make it”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Botswana’s founding party saw its share of the vote dip below 50% for the first time at the last election in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That year, the two main opposition parties, which teamed up to form the UDC, won a breakthrough 30 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This time, the BDP vote share could be around 44% of the vote, according to a pre-poll survey carried out by Afrobarometer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than 900,000 of the country’s 2.2 million people are registered to vote in the elections, which are at parliamentary and local level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maroba said voter turnout had reached more than 50%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The BDP, UDC and two smaller parties are vying for the 57 places in parliament, where the party with the most seats chooses the president. — NNN-AGENCIES<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

GABORONE, Oct 24 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Botswana voted on Wednesday in a cliffhanger election set to test the decades-long dominance of the ruling party and challenge the country’s image of stability. The southern African nation’s 2 200 polling stations started closing at 17:00 GMT as many were still waiting in queues to cast their ballots in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[213],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47602"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47602\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/namnewsnetwork.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}