Saleshando promises Rubicon Speech at Kanye Congress
Oarabile Mosikare | Friday July 17, 2015 11:51
The BCP will hold its seventh national elective congress at Seepapitso Senior Secondary School in Kanye from tomorrow until Monday.
Saleshando told Mmegi that there is no need to speculate that BCP members lack the maturity to discuss the issue with open minds.
“It will not be the first time that we have such a discussion with members holding opposing views. The issue has been discussed extensively within the regional meetings that were held across the country after the October 2014 elections. The leadership and delegates, who will be at the Kanye congress, know our members’ views. No drama has been reported from the regions on account of the debate about opposition cooperation,” he said.
Saleshando said some people have urged him as party leader to unilaterally decide on the party position regarding cooperation with the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). He said that some who regard his unwillingness to make such a pronouncement as a sign of weakness are a few opposition members who quit the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) on account of President Ian Khama’s leadership style of directives.
Saleshando, who has been with BCP from formation 1998, said the party has always been a membership driven organisation when it comes to making decision on key issues.
“I do not plan to change this and introduce a new culture of presidential directives and abandon the culture of debate. I will have the opportunity to persuade members to see my viewpoint on what decisions the party should take, which I will do in my address to the delegates in Kanye.
“I will however subject myself to the decision favoured by majority of the candidates; that is what democracy is about. My commitment to the BCP will not be diminished even if the majority does not support my viewpoint. After all, we are not a one-issue party. There is a lot that the BCP stands for, that complements with the values that I stand for, such as fairness and equal opportunity,” he added.
Saleshando said he always looked forward to any trip to Kanye, where he was born almost 44 years ago.
“Some friends have drawn my attention to the political jinx associated with the village of Kanye. The Botswana National Front (BNF) once held its congress in Kanye, on the eve of Kenneth Koma’s retirement.
“The party did not come back in one piece, Koma walked out of the BNF with his loyalists to form the New Democratic Front (NDF). More recently, the BDP had their sojourn in Kanye and the outcome was a split that led to the formation of the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD).
Some prophets of doom posit that it is now the BCP turn to drink from the Kanye well of political misfortune.”
Saleshando is however of the view that the soothsayers who are predicting inevitable gloom and doom are not without evidence to support their argument.
“First, they point out to the fact that we have had a dreadful election in 2014, a fact we all concede in the BCP, given the high standards we always set for ourselves. Other cracks of possible eruption include the issue of opposition cooperation and the tense atmosphere that naturally accompanies contest for leadership positions,” he said.
The BCP leader also conceded that the 2014 general elections were a painful episode for the party.
“This is because we lost seats we had won in 2009 as well as through defections from other parties at both Parliament and Local Government levels.
“It will be recalled that it is not the first time we have suffered such a feat. In 1999, we went into the election with 11 sitting MPs only to secure one seat in Parliament. Many people wrote our obituary and called the 11 MPs who had formed the ‘BCP Eleven Men in Flight’, a name used by some Swaziland football team. If my memory serves me well, we only had 13 councilors and about 11 percent of the popular vote.
The party was only a year old and structures had not been formed in many parts of the country. We resembled the biblical house built by the foolish man on sand that came down with a great crash when the rain came down.”
Did the BCP come tumbling down when confronted by the political hailstorms of the time? Saleshando doesn’t think so.
“No, and there is a lot of evidence to demonstrate that the BCP of 2015 is much stronger than the BCP of 1999. Therefore, our detractors need to abandon the 2014 election results argument as the basis of predicting the end of time for BCP,” he said.
Saleshando also dismissed the notion that the BCP does not have a culture of internal contest and normally settles for backdoor compromises amongst some obscure sponsors of the party and the top leadership.
“It is claimed that with our culture of compromise candidates, we will not survive the turmoil of the current contests in the build up to Kanye. The reality is that from the maiden leadership elections in 1998 when the party was formed, we have always had vigorous contests for leadership positions. Mike Dingake contested against Botshabelo Bagwasi, who was Gaborone mayor at the time, to become the first leader of the BCP,” he said.
The turn of events thereafter continued to be interesting, Saleshando noted.
“When he stepped down, there was a contest for the top position between Otlaadisa Koosaletse and Gilson Saleshando, with Koosaletse winning to become the second leader of the BCP.
In subsequent elections, Gilson Saleshando defeated Koosaletse to become the third leader of the party. Look at the long list of people who have occupied the position of secretary general through internal contests and you will just wonder if the BCP critics have any time for facts rather than fiction,” he said.
The BCP leader said he was however concerned as the party leader by the advent of the use of slates for internal contest. This is a scenario where lobby groups choose to campaign for a list of candidates (slate) for each and every position and not endorse anyone not in their list, regardless of competence. He is of the view that the use of slates denies the party the opportunity to elect its best possible cadres to leadership positions. This according to him is because one group would go all out to assert its dominance in the party to the exclusion of the other.
Saleshando reasoned that differences between the groups are not informed by contest of ideas on the best way forward for the party but are rather based on friendships.
“The cohesion within a lobby group tends to be sustained beyond the election and this is a good foundation for the formation of factions. It has not been in the culture of BCP internal contests to use slates and have a lobby list that targets all positions as we saw with our Women’s League and Youth League elections.
“This has now extended to the main party congress. I hope that party members will have the wisdom not to rally blindly behind a single lobby group, but rather choose the best from the two lobby groups. Post Kanye, it will be critical to ensure that lobby groups are dismantled and elected comrades supported in their new positions,” he said.
Saleshando travels to Kanye not consumed by despair nor fearing the infamous Kanye ‘political jinx’. He is instead hopeful that BCP members will return from Kanye with solid resolutions that will not only change the party for the better, but also position it to deliver the political change that the country desperately needs.