Tonota loss is not failure of unity opposition

After the elections, critics are pointing fingers at the opposition, especially the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) that caused ripples of near-seismic proportions on Botswana’s political scene when it was formed earlier this year.

They say its presence on the campaign trail contributed little, not least because it concentrated more on recruiting new members to bolster  - some will say bloat - its ranks ahead of planned opposition unity talks. This the BMD does, the criticism goes,  in order to attain equal status with the BNF, the grandsire of Botswana’s opposition politics with more than 40 years behind it, and its more organized spawn of 1998, the BCP.