Finally i got it! by Spencer Mogapi When Botswana Congress Party took a dramatic decision almost three years ago to pull out of the Umbrella for Democratic Change the party could not have foreseen at the time the killer punch it was delivering on chances of opposition takeover. Ironically, the upshot of that BCP decision is that rather than enhance its own chances, the party might turn out to be the biggest victim by becoming what American military planners call collateral damage. Reverberations of that decision by the BCP will get ever more pronounced as we approach the General Elections, becoming much more glaring in the wake of elections as all involved start to count the costs by way of political body bags. The Botswana Democratic Party is today much weaker than at any point many of us can remember. It is a party ripe for the taking. Such weakness does not so much stem from the party’s infighting along traditional factional lines as it does from organizational and structural fractures owing to weak executive leadership elected at their last congress in Maun. A good number of people in BDP’s executive today are shamefully clueless when it comes to just what their party stands for. Thus by BCP pulling out of the alliance, a unique, almost unprecedented opportunity to deliver a killer punch on a Botswana Democratic Party already on its knees has been squandered. This is because any opposition alliance without the BCP is a weaker alliance. To put BCP’s withdrawal into context, we have to highlight that owing to that fateful decision, it will now be impossible to have both Dumelang Saleshando and Gomolemo Motswaledi in parliament after the General Election. The country’s democracy will be all the richer with both the leaders present in the House. Anyone of the two leaders who claims to be sure of who between them will be in parliament may have to be referred for both psychiatric review and evaluation. It did not have to be like this. Thus Saleshando was manifestly wrong to say at the launch of the BCP manifesto that Gaborone Central was a BCP heartland. As is the case with many other constituencies across the country anything can happen at Gaborone Central. More distressing however has not been BCP’s pullout, which though a clear and unambiguous own goal could on its own can be forgiven if the party is given a benefit of doubt that when it was taken the atmosphere inside the Umbrella had become soiled and poisoned on account of fighting for constituencies which almost crippled the project altogether. What has however been truly disheartening to watch is that when the Botswana Congress Party pulled out of the Umbrella, they literally broke down the non-aggression pact that had up to then held together. To make matters worse, after shattering the non-aggression pact some of the party’s leaders went on to start dancing on the pieces. In an act of debasement the party’s hotheads were unleashed to embark on a process of bloodletting that specifically targeted, isolated and humiliated the UDC leader, Duma Boko. This was much worse than the earlier own goal. And as it is it might yet turn out to be an exercise in self-defeat. An elementary fact that nobody could grasp was that even with the BCP outside the Umbrella, a peace deal between BCP and UDC would most certainly help deliver people like Kesitegile Gobotswang into parliament as well as help the BCP gain the long elusive constituencies like Ramotswa, Francitown East, Bobirwa, Gaborone North and many more. As it is, Gobotswang may just find his parliamentary ambitions a hair thin away but painfully still not attainable. In Kanye anything can happen. Kentse Rammidi may find himself without a job after October, a thing that could very easily have been avoided by tolerance and cool-headedness. It is not a given that the beneficiary of Rammidi fall will turn out to be the UDC. Under the circumstances the BDP seems determined to teach Rammidi a lesson in basic history. Additionally, the absence of a non-aggression pact between BCP and UDC might yet cost both BCP and UDC the Mogoditshane Constituency. It has got nothing to do with Patrick Masimolole being popular. It is called vote splitting. When we point these things out, BCP intellectuals accuse us of bias and of supporting the UDC. We admit the charge but not in the context in which they are made. At the time the BCP decision was made an impression was playing out that in the short term the party would become the strongest political party in the country after the BDP. Circumstances have changed dramatically. There is anger and resentment against the BDP. And with the BDP now imploding there is a backlash, with the public effectively dragging in the BCP and accusing the party of delaying change. The more uncharitable have gone further to accuse the BCP of selling out, which by any measure is larger in scale to delaying change; larger in scale but not so much different in kind!
Posted on: Mon, 26 May 2014 12:04:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015