{"id":431964,"date":"2024-10-30T10:40:47","date_gmt":"2024-10-30T07:40:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/?p=431964"},"modified":"2024-10-30T10:40:47","modified_gmt":"2024-10-30T07:40:47","slug":"presidential-parliamentary-polls-open-in-botswana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/presidential-parliamentary-polls-open-in-botswana\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential, parliamentary polls open in Botswana"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>LUSAKA, Zambia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Presidential and parliamentary polls opened in Botswana early on Wednesday, with four contenders for the country&#8217;s top job including incumbent President Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi.<\/p>\n<p>Masisi, 63, is seeking reelection for another five-year term of office and is running on the ruling Botswana Democratic Party ticket.<\/p>\n<p>Other candidates are Umbrella for Democratic Change&#8217;s advocate Duma Boko, 54, Botswana Congress Party&#8217;s Dumelang Saleshando and Botswana Patriotic Front&#8217;s Mephato Reatile.<\/p>\n<p>The presidential election is being held simultaneously with parliamentary polls, with the term of members also running for five years.<\/p>\n<p>The Botswana National Assembly comprises 65 members of parliament, including the president and speaker being ex-officious, with 57 members being elected by constituents and six specifically elected by members of parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The Independent Electoral Commission of Botswana (IEC) said more than 1 million voters are eligible to cast their votes among the nation&#8217;s 2.5 million population.<\/p>\n<p>Masisi has declared polling day a public holiday to encourage high voter turnout.<\/p>\n<p>Polling stations opened at 7 a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and are expected to close by 7 p.m., after which vote counting will begin.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the key election issues raised ahead of the polls included high unemployment among the youth, deteriorating health sector which requires a boost and calls for the diversification of the economy heavily reliant on diamonds to other minerals.<\/p>\n<p>Source: AA<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>LUSAKA, Zambia Presidential and parliamentary polls opened in Botswana early on Wednesday, with four contenders for the country&#8217;s top job including incumbent President Mokgweetsi Eric Masisi. Masisi, 63, is seeking reelection for another five-year term of office and is running on the ruling Botswana Democratic Party ticket. Other candidates are Umbrella for Democratic Change&#8217;s advocate [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":431965,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[78],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-431964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431964"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431964\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431966,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431964\/revisions\/431966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonna.so\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}