Electoral pledges and NDPs misaligned
The government has acknowledged that there are some electoral pledges of the ruling party not incorporated in the National Development Plans ( NDPs) due to misalignment of cycles between the national development planning and national elections processes.
Assistant Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration Meshack Mthimkhulu said the NDP11 started implementation during the 1st April 2017 to 31st March 2023. He revealed that the last national elections were held in October 2019 in the middle of the third year of NDP 11 and during the seventh month of financial year 2019/ 2020. NDP 11 was approved by the National Assembly in December 2016.
“However, despite the misalignment between the national development planning and national election processes, there are two opportunities to introduce new programmes and projects into the NDPs to accommodate the pledges by the ruling party.
“These two avenues have been used to incorporate the pledges within the National Development Planning Framework. I can confirm that the bigger proportion of the electoral pledges of the ruling party are incorporated within the medium- term National Development Plans ( NDPs) of the country,” he told Parliament this week.
According to the Minister the first avenue is through the annual budget. In terms of our planning processes, new programmes and projects not included in the NDPs can be introduced at the time of the preparation of the annual budgets which are subsequently approved by Parliament, Mthimkhulu explained, adding that opportunities in this window are very limited as only so much can be done in a year.
“The second channel of introducing new programmes and projects into the existing NDP is through the medium- term review of such plan. Medium- Term Review ( MTR) of the NDPs therefore provides a meaningful opportunity for the ruling party to get their election promises into the current plan subject to availability of resources and implementation capacity. “An example is the project to dual the A1 road. It was initially not part of the NDP 11, but was introduced during the MTR of NDP 11 which was approved by the National
Assembly in July 2020 during the financial year 2020/ 2021. This is especially true for other development projects.
“These include hospitals, clinics, roads, water, electrification, village connectivity and many other social physical infrastructure projects. This is the area that suffers most from the misalignment of the national elections and NDPs cycles”, Mthimkhulu said.
He indicated that the situation is different for programmes funded under Recurrent Budget. This, he said can be accommodated in the next financial year after the general elections. Again, opportunities during this window are very limited as only so much can be done in a year, he added.
Mthimkhulu said discussions on the possible alignment of the general election and NDPs cycles have been held before and continue to take place within the government to find a permanent solution to this situation. “Immediately after the general elections in November 2019, the Office of the President ( OP) organised a Cabinet Retreat to develop Cabinet Strategic Thrusts to guide the integration of the ruling party promises into both NDP 11 and annual plans.
“On whether the Government will not consider setting up a permanent structure where the ruling party and Government, can deal with the issue of misalignment of cycles between the national development planning and national election processes, one can only say that Government has a robust planning system and structures to handle the request from the ruling party, therefore, such consideration will not be necessary for now,” noted Mthimkhulu.
The Minister was responding to a question from MP for Gaborone North, Mpho Balopi who asked the Minister for Presidential Affairs, Governance and Public Administration whether he is aware that several electoral pledges of the ruling party never make it into the development plans of the country and further state: what measures, if any, are in place or in the pipeline to ensure that pledges against which the ruling party was elected into Government are incorporated into development plans; and whether Government will not consider setting up a permanent structure where the ruling party and Government can occasionally consider areas where alignment of manifesto pledges and development plans can be made.