HIDDEN AGENDA
Demand for apology is a plan to discard BCP from UDC - observers
There are growing suspicions that two members of the opposition coalition – BNF and BPP – are harbouring a hidden agenda against the third coalition partner, the Botswana Congress Party.
This follows a meeting of the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) in Palapye this past Saturday.
The suspicion of a hidden agenda springs from the demand by the Duma Boko-led Botswana National Front and Motlatsi Molapisiled Botswana Peoples Party for the BCP to apologise for talking to the media about UDC issues. Boko doubles as the leader of the UDC. Dumelang Saleshando, the president of the BCP deputises Boko at UDC, while Molapisi is the national Chairman of the coalition.
“Boko’s agenda is to destroy the BCP. His desire is to see the BCP dead as he hopes that without a party, the BCP members would then join the BNF hence increasing his chances of winning the elections,” a BCP youth that preferred anonymity, said.
His belief is that Boko does not like Saleshando because, like him, Saleshando is highly educated and eloquent. Allegedly, Boko’s discomfort with Saleshando also has to do with the fact that the BCP has got a much higher number of MPs from the 2019 general elections than its coalition partners.
There is a school of thought that now that the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) is ready to join the UDC, Boko may find the idea of dispensing the BCP attractive as the BPF would give him the numbers should the BCP be expelled. An academic also preferring anonymity said that although Boko and Molapisi have Saleshando as a common adversary, the two are strange bedfellows with different motives for their collective disdain of the BCP and its leader, Saleshando. “Boko and Molapisi may be on the same side but they do not necessarily agree with each other on certain issues including the running of the UDC,” he posited.
The academic said while the BPP’s frustration emanates from the rather brash BCP,
which he says is hell-bent on driving his party out of its traditional stronghold in the northern part of Botswana, Boko “wants power and he sees the BCP as an obstacle.” According to him, the BCP independent candidate (mokoko) who beat Molapisi at Boikhutso ward in Francistown in the 2019 general elections, remains a sore point to the BPP family and needs to be threshed out including by the UDC as a whole to ensure that such underhand tactics do not ever occur should the opposition parties go into the 2024 general elections and beyond as a collective. Molapisi and his party believe that the BCP activist strategically resigned from his party so that he may contest as an independent’ candidate.
Apparently, the BCP cadre did not only get verbal encouragement from his party to contest. BCP members especially in Francistown reportedly helped him with resources including campaign vehicles. Molapisi is said to have raised the Boikhutso ward incident at the UDC NEC meeting in Palapye over the weekend; an indication that three years down the line, the matter remains a sore point. A BNF veteran warns the BCP to despise the BPP and its leader at their peril.
“Recently, a BCP member described the BPP as a leadership without a following. This can only serve to escalate the hostilities between the parties,” observed the veteran, who accused the BCP of sometimes exhibiting extreme partisanship at the expense of opposition cooperation. “The
party has been cruel to the BPP especially when it refused to accommodate the BPP by letting go of some wards in and around Francistown. “Regardless of the fact that the BPP is a small party, Molapisi is the power broker at the moment,” observed the veteran, who added that Boko sees the BCP and its leader as obstacles to his journey to State House. The veteran agrees with those who say the BCP should retract the uncomplimentary statements they have been making publicly. “The apology should be conditional. Boko himself should first apologise for mismanaging the UDC and the BNF where he is the president respectively.
“If he does not convene any of the structures, particularly the UDC National Executive Committee (NEC) regularly as the rules stipulate, what does he mean when he says people should address party issues at the right forums and not through the media?
“Those who have communicated through the media did that as a last resort because the appropriate platforms are dysfunctional because of him,” he said. According to the veteran, it would be foolhardy for anybody to believe that the opposition can win the elections without the BCP.
“The BCP is no doubt the largest single party in this country as we speak,” he said. A BNF activist believes the demand for retraction by the BCP is an excuse to expel the party from the UDC. “The UDC leader knows that the BCP will not apologise. He will likely use that as an excuse to expel the party
from the collective. Boko should however accept the fact that he has failed the opposition a lot,” said the opposition party activist. In his view, one way in which Boko is trying to destroy the BCP is by influencing BCP Members of Parliament (MPs) to defy their party at every turn. During the Bophirima by-election, BCP MPs did not support their party. Allegedly, some at the Palapye meeting blame Boko for the confusion which led both the BCP and UDC to each field a candidate at Bophirima. “He failed to meaningfully involve the opposition fraternity when there was an impasse,” the BNF veteran said. Meanwhile, the apology demanded from BCP is yet to be tendered. Instead, the BCP on Tuesday released a statement that totally ignored that instruction from the UDC. BCP’s spokesperson Dr Mpho Pheko rather chose to tell the media that the UDC at their media briefing after the Palapye meeting did not represent events as they happened. “If those charged with the responsibility of communicating on behalf of the UDC (The President and Spokesperson) choose to not give a true account of the NEC discussions, the BCP will be obliged to set the record straight. In the meantime, the party will be consulting it’s structures on the outcomes of the meeting,” Prof. Pheko stated. For now, on the matter of the apology, it is a stalemate.