Party factions, good or bad?

Michael Dingake | Tuesday April 1, 2014 12:44

It is difficult to picture any political party without factions. Human society is by nature riddled with factions; essentially as people, we hold different viewpoints at any time because we look at subjects, objects, issues , other people from different angles and perspectives. No two persons can have the same opinion on every subject they talk about, analyse, review or debate. This is natural, healthy and commendable. Why then are factions such a headache in political parties at all times? There are no think-a-likes in life, yet people want to invent them!

There are several reasons why differences or factions become a headache or tend to polarise political parties. One of the reasons is that some people are intolerant of other people’s viewpoints, they may profess to know more or better than others; another reason is that to every subject, issue, object, there are many sides, aspects, angles and we do not all see all the sides in a single cast of an eye, in addition, we tend to miss what the other person might see and we don’t see. This is not a bad thing because together, when we aggregate our various views, we are bound to see the complete picture and arrive at a consensus as how to exploit it to common advantage.            

Of all the political systems none is as fraught with factionalism as the democratic system. Paradoxically,  on hindsight this is what makes democracy durable and dynamic. Without factions democracy would stagnate or regress. How then do we explain the apparent destabilising factor of factions within parties? Other political systems basically, authoritarian, don’t experience factions for the simple reason that they advocate uniformity of opinion and enforce it by fiat and habit. The short answer to the destabilising effect of factions, is that the moment the leadership of a democratic party becomes intolerant to a budding or existing faction within the party, trouble looms. Different political parties manage factions differently. Take how the BNF handles its Temporary Platform faction. The BNF leadership prefers to tolerate the faction and afford it opportunity to air its factional view-point. The method may not always work, but it carries within it the seed of reconciliation of minds. Contrast this method with that of BDP under the stewardship of the Lieutenant General King Khama IV:

Plagued by the Big-Five and the Big-Two factions, the then BDP president recruited the BDF commander to join the BDP hierarchy, specifically to neutralise factions. There were two mistaken beliefs in the decision: The first one was the notion that the commander flaunting the background of military discipline had the knack to instill discipline in the BDP un-disciplined factions; the fact that the two institutions - the army barracks and the democratic political party arena were diametrically opposed was overlooked: the army is dictatorial by design, while the BD is democratic, in theory and practice ;  two,  the notion that the new man was unbitten by the bug of factionalism and ipso facto immune from any contamination of factions, was unresearched; one BDP faction was led by the ex-commander’s boss at the barracks, which situation couldn’t be dismissed frivolously.

From the book, “Madam Speaker, Sir, Breaking The Glass Ceiling, One Woman’s Struggle,” by Speaker of the National Assembly Dr Margaret Nasha, we see the General as BDP chairman  conducting meetings by the stopwatch and throwing democratic procedures to the four winds. Instead of diminishing or withering away, the BDP factions resuscitated, became entrenched and eventually split the party in the middle. The General obviously lacked skill in faction management, he applied the military discipline code instead of applying the tested conflict resolution mechanisms that works in the realm of give-and-take of democratic dispensation.

Factions are bad if mismanaged. Managed properly, factions bring dynamism and flexibility to political parties. Factions are of a variety: Some emerge out of genuine disagreement in the interpretation of party ideology, crafting of party policies and programmes. Nuances of disagreement on party ideology, policies and programme implementation are endemic in democratic systems they make the system tick,  dynamic, flexible, adaptable and concurrent with the prevailing political environment. Political leaders do well by keeping in step with factional rhythms and applying themselves to resolution and reconciling of factions. Factions, unless deliberately controversial and disruptive, are good; they help keep the party and its auxiliaries alert, alive and combative!

Factions are bad when they coalesce around an individual. What happens in that situation is, members virtually mortgage their independence to an individual; they stop thinking, parrot whatever the faction leader says and they adopt a hostile attitude to members who don’t subscribe to what their leader advocates. In such a scenario contributions from non-members are always rejected, opposed , distorted and ridiculed. When such phenomenon rears its ugly head, party plunges into instability, splits or embraces cultism, all of which undermines the vitality of the party and spells its doom. Formed out of strongly-held attitudes and viewpoint, the faction ends up individualised, thoughtless, opinionated and bankrupt. Party members become Stalinists, Trotskyites, Leninists and Maoists. A viewpoint held by the faction leader becomes dogma, doctrine, unchallengeable. What happens eventually is that the faction subordinates the party to a cult of the individual. At that point the party declines, dies and awaits a pauper funeral!