The Botswana Democratic Party (abbr. BDP) is the governing party in Botswana. Its chairman is the Vice-President of Botswana, Slumber Tsogwane, and its symbol is a lift jack. The party has ruled Botswana continuously since gaining independence from the United Kingdom in 1966. Despite being classified as a paternalistic conservative party, the BDP is a consultative member of the Socialist International since 2014, which is a group including many worldwide social-democratic parties.