Every conversation in every pub, in every church and in every bus always leads to the Economic Stimulus Package.
It is a sign of the times that a phrase that barely a month ago many of our people had never heard of has all of sudden become part of our national mainstream lexicon.
Everything is being put on a halt as we await the arrival of the Economic Stimulus Package.
There is not a news bulletin in the state media that passes without reference to the Stimulus.
Wherever one looks, we are being advised to prepare and brace ourselves for the oncoming ESP.
Yet nobody is kind enough to go a step further to say just how this animal, if it ever reaches our shores is really going to look like.
In very vague terms we are being told that the Economic Stimulus Package is going to be a health cure to all our economic ailments.
In the same terms we are being told that with the package the days of unemployment will become a thing of the past.
It would be a careless assumption to take our leaders at their word.
We should not be duped.
We need to ask as many questions and be skeptical to avoid not just disappointment but also being taken for fools.
While there is so much talk about the Economic Stimulus Package, the one biggest irony of it all is that there is not even a whisper from the man whose views on this issue really matter most.
The Minister of Finance has been typically disinterested about a topic on which everybody has overnight become an authority. It should say something to us that to even mention the phrase, the Minister of Finance has to be literally dragged wailing and screaming.
While everybody is talking ESP, it is one subject that the Minister of Finance does not want to touch.
Cold, detached, and cynical as ever my homeboy, Ken Matambo probably does not even want to engage on a topic that has all of a sudden has come dominate our national DNA.
From his comments in Parliament last week it is clear that the minister does not understand what the whole excitement surrounding the Economic Stimulus Package is really about.
To say Matambo is a reluctant politician is to recklessly understate his aloof demeanour towards politics.
While his party’s strategists are busy trying to use the stimulus as a means of staying in power, he will probably not shed a single tear to see the Botswana Democratic Party lose power.
All other cabinet ministers are running all over the country exploring people to form companies.
Economic illiteracy is at the bottom of this quack-like behavior among our cabinet ministers.
Almost all of them have not a slightest idea how the economy works.
That never take time out to read even the elementary principles of running a government, much less the more technical stuff involved in producing a government budget speech and its accompanying ancillary documents.
It’s like a fairytale. While people are living real life hardships, our cabinet ministers ÔÇô at least from their casual behavior ÔÇô exhibit the characteristics of people living in wonderland.
Given the pace at which we are going it may well be that this Economic Stimulus Package euphoria is nothing but a hoax.
This Government has not been known to observe any real life exigencies. But its reluctance to provide details even on something they know their existence depends has been unprecedented.
The chief architect of this Government has from the onset enjoyed assuming all the characteristics of Father Christmas.
And it should be most worrying to us all that the ESP announcement has come right in the middle of a Christmas season.
