Moupo should gracefully bow out

EPHRAIM KEORENG
Staff Writer | Friday October 23, 2009 00:00

 

Almost all the political parties performed better, in the sense that they have improved on their tallies. Even the Themba Joina-led MELS has shown some growth because Joina, who stood in Mogoditshane, saw his total votes increase from 15 in 2004 to 85 this year.
But unfortunately the same cannot be said of the Botswana National Front (BNF), which at 21.4 percent lost its status - as the second popular party - to the Botswana Congress Party (BCP). With 22.1 percent the BCP is no doubt getting closer to becoming number two, after the victorious Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) which romped to victory with a 53.7 percent, improving from 50.63 garnered in the 2004 elections.

 In 2004, the BCP was third with 16.27 percent whilst the main opposition BNF stood at 25.51 percent. It is against this backdrop that most critics within and outside the BNF are rooting for Moupo's resignation from the party presidency.

In Western democracies like Britain and the United States of America (US) usually a leader would take responsibility for the poor performance of the political organisation he leads. But Moupo, like others of his ilk in Africa's fledgling democracies, is adamant that he will quit.

'Politics is not like private companies where the board members can say because the company is not making profits, you must resign. The people of BNF will decide whom they want at the 2010 July congress. I was elected and will not resign just because a few malcontents are calling for my resignation,' he said.

Moupo would not take responsibility for the demise of this once great political movement that was led by the charismatic Kenneth Koma, who is credited with taking the BNF to greater heights before bringing it down when he sided with one faction within the party, only to leave to join the new National Democratic Front (NDF).

 At a press conference in Gaborone this week, Moupo found himself parrying difficult questions from journalists who wanted to know why he was not stepping down.

One even asked him why, instead of waiting for the July 2010 BNF congress, he cannot call a special congress so the BNF membership can right away decide whether they want him or not.

A tough one indeed. How do you call a meeting to decide whether you are still fit to run your organisation? What if the members say he should go?

Though he tried hard to evade the tough question, he admitted that his central committee did not do enough to counter the negative publicity and anti-party propaganda unleashed by the so-called Temporary Platform and their 'supporters within some sections of the public were influenced by this propaganda and thus became alienated from the party,' he said.

The BDP also found its way into the leader's defence (of the party loss), when Moupo decried the unequal access to the state media, where he said the ruling party enjoyed unrestricted access to state media, especially Botswana Television (Btv) 'particularly during the last days of the campaign'.

Though he said his party was under-resourced to effectively campaign for the general election, he later told this reporter that the Kgalagadi Breweries Limited (KBL) sponsorship for political parties was used to finance the party's campaign material like printing t-shirts, billboards and other accessories. Therefore his statement negates his assertion that their loss was due to lack of campaign resources.

Perhaps exasperated by Moupo's feeble explanation, the media approached his deputy, Olebile Gaborone to explain the party's humiliation at the polls. Gaborone points out that though Koma was a good leader, he spent more time growing the movement and neglecting the organisational part of the movement.

He said that there has been rampant indiscipline in the party, where people could just join and leave the party only to rejoin it without any action being taken against them.
He said that the issue of the Temporary Platform where expelled members continue to cause havoc and refer themselves as BNF members was a clear sign of indiscipline. He said that some of the BNF council candidates in his South East North constituencies lost elections after flirting with the belligerent Temporary Platform.

'The two council candidates had been decampaigning us, campaigning for my opponent, the BDP's Fashion Katse. The BNF voters got wind of this and said they would punish the two, hence the two lost the wards, which were BNF strongholds,' he said.

Gaborone said that the problem is that BNF people are bad losers, especially when it comes to central committee elections. He gave the example of the  emergence of the NDF as a product of discontent within the movement after some members lost the central committee elections.