Crisis in the ruling party!

Michael Dingake | Tuesday May 6, 2014 15:40

Very few admit they have  a crisis situation even if they have. The standard reaction is to deny there is a crisis on the doorstep let alone in the bedroom. Could there be some hoodoo related to this crisis thing that people refuse to acknowledge?  Crisis is ‘a time of great danger or trouble, often one which threatens to result in unpleasant consequences…..’  Do we smell any crisis in the BDP and why does anybody let alone As-I-See-It Columnist be keen that the reading public take notice? The simple reason is that the BDP is by conventional democratic wisdom , the driver, driving us to destination desirable; we are passengers who have entrusted our lives and hopes to this person at the controls. It is therefore the responsibility of any of us as fellow passengers to raise the alarm when we perceive danger impinging on our lives and safe arrival at our destination, when our driver is caught indulging in drinking while driving or slumbering at the wheel. Some may object on the basis that As-I-See-It personally has never approved this driver as suitable driver to our destination. Fair comment. However, in spite of the fact that previous alerts have been treated with disdain or assigned to the Cassandra’s waste paper basket, it doesn’t make sense that one must now zip when it is obvious the driver will bring certain national catastrophe, by this driving and drinking habit. Fellow passengers deserve to be alerted lest they perish in a drunken spectacle!

Two eminent MPs of the ruling party, one the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, another a onetime Cabinet Minister of the party have defected. The two are not your ordinary defectors, they are former pillars of the BDP political edifice. Detractors may call them all sorts of derogatory names: hypocrites, crybabies, opportunists, what not. Do we expect politicians to be, cast-in-stone? Politics is dynamic; it changes when change demands. Politicians who don’t change when the politics changes will change into pillars of salt like Lot’s wife. We know Saul the persecutor of Christians not only changed his name from Saul to Paul, but changed his attitude to Christians. He saw the light. Nothing wrong with Honourables Pono Moatlhodi and Moeng  Pheto changing their minds to renounce the parrot cry, that ‘there is still no alternative’ to the BDP when it has become abundantly clear that BDP was never an alternative whatsoever, except for those who admired Margaret Thatcher and wanted to mark parrot her digs at Labour Party.  Moatlhodi and Pheto have moved a step in the right direction, away from the precipice of political death. Wise men and women will refuse to get on a bus hurtling down the precipice to destruction and death with a drunken driver at the wheel. Why do I have to be concerned to write about it? Am I just making propaganda noises as must happen since one man’s food is another man’s poison? This crisis doesn’t distinguish foe from friend…..

BDP’s crisis doesn’t start and end with the defection of Moatlhodi and Pheto, it is deeper and graver as it nears its culmination point. The genesis of the crisis situation is traceable to the misguided change of players in midstream, substituting civilian striker with fullback to score goals. It is not a done thing! Political factions are managed, not court-martialed. After the death of Sir Seretse the first president his successor, Sir Ketumile was a wise man who knew how to manage the factional tendencies in the party; Sir Ketumile’s successor however felt unequal to the task of managing factions and believed the panacea was skills importation from the barracks which boasted a record of absence of mutiny from troops who turned right when the order was ‘right turn!’ and stood erect when the order was ‘attention!’ Lieutenant General Ian Khama was a dubious import from the barracks because the barracks skills are incompatible with democratic dispensation, but equally the general’s personality was incompatible with the give-and-take personality of a political democrat. After 38 years of party stability, the BDP split for the first time in 2010 to give birth to the Botswana Movement of Democracy. Two years later some of the dissidents retraced their steps back, notably one Guma Moyo who became a good example of the party’s forgiveness of prodigals when he was elected to the chairmanship of the party shortly after his return!

It looked too good to be true and indeed he soon relinquished the top seat alleging intra-party conspiracies that threatened party stability if he stayed perched at the helm. Too late the phalarope, the crisis bug had come to stay and mutate.  The mutation is un-mistakable. The BDP monolith is expiring, it is for Batswana across the spectrum to facilitate a pain-free expiration!

Marobela-Moswaane court saga and its aftermath of fraudulent petition to the Office of the President illustrated things falling apart, irrevocably.

Discipline in a democratic environment differs from discipline in military barracks. Commands-and-directives that serve the barracks well by instilling fear in the troops find only a few yes-siring adherents in parliaments and councils; for majority in parliament and council kitchens, the commands-and-directives menu is indigestible.