SELLO MOTSETA
Associated Press
GABORONE, Botswana (AP) — Botswana’s incumbent president has been appointed for a second term after his party won its eleventh successive election.
Ian Khama, the Botswana Democratic Party’s presidential candidate and the country’s leader since 2009, was appointed to a second term on Sunday, the government said.
The country’s newly elected parliament voted for Khama after his party won a majority of seats in the national election. Khama, a retired general and the son of independence leader Seretse Khama, will be sworn in on Tuesday, Botswana’s Chief Justice Maruping Dibotelo said in a statement to state media.
The BDP, which has been in power since the country’s independence from Britain in 1966, won 36 seats in the peaceful general election on Friday according to an announcement in the Botswana Daily News.
An opposition group, the Umbrella for Democratic Change, won fifteen seats, and another group, the Botswana Congress Party, secured three seats. A party needs 29 seats to take power in Botswana. The new parliament elects the president in a southern African country that has a reputation for stability and clean governance, although opposition figures allege the leadership has become increasingly intolerant.
In 2009 elections, the ruling party won 45 of 57 directly elected parliamentary seats but won the popular vote by a smaller margin with 53.3 percent, leading fractious opposition groups to complain they were inadequately represented.
In this election, the opposition made significant inroads in the country’s urban areas while the ruling party maintained its support in the rural parts of the country.
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Associated Press writer Lynsey Chutel contributed to this story from Johannesburg.
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