BCP denies pressure to quit UDC
Ryder Gabathuse | Friday March 6, 2020 16:40
UDC is a tri-party coalition which gained the main opposition berth in Parliament after winning 15 parliamentary seats in last year’s polls. Other opposition parties in minority include the new kid on the political block, Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) and Alliance for Progressives (AP) with three and a single seat respectively. The ruling Botswana Democratic Party has majority 38 elected seats in Parliament.
“I don’t think the UDC marriage is shaken to the core, to the extent that the BCP was considering pulling out,” Gobotswang denied in a telephone interview from South Africa, where he is on official duty.
But reports reaching Mmegi suggest that the BCP top leadership is so divided that some are not on talking terms as a result of differences even though Gobotswang has dismissed the allegation as misleading.
Come July at the party’s elective congress, fireworks are expected as congress delegates are expected to vent out their frustrations about their party’s continued membership of the UDC.
Mounting fear is that as UDC leadership has not been meeting to discuss important political developments, the UDC was likely to stagnate without proper leadership guidance on pertinent matters.
Since last October polls, the UDC leadership has never met for elections post-mortem and even decisions to petition election results in some constituencies was not communicated to the other members of the UDC leadership.
“Issues are just piling up and there has literally been no activity by the UDC leadership, people just learn certain important developments through the news media or worse through the social media,” queried a BCP leader that preferred anonymity.
For five months the UDC leadership hasn’t met. The thinking has been that the UDC leadership will be proactive and attend to matters of the three parties as a matter of priority. Gobotswang was however, quick to concede, “every marriage has its own problems. When there are problems, we deal with them and there is no one who can even think of quitting.”
He is worried that at best, “the UDC is operating more like a pressure group instead of presenting its rightful image of an organisation with a clear cut programme of action.”
Gobotswang, who is also Sefhare-Ramokgonami legislator, conceded that every organisation has its problems. At the UDC, the main problem has been “inactivity” since the 2019 general election.
“It’s in the nature of organisations that there would be challenges,” he says and added: “ Within the UDC people are worried about the problem of the leadership failing to create a platform to deal with the UDC problems.”
He said since the 2019 general election last October, the UDC national executive committee (NEC) has not met to even evaluate the conduct of the elections it hoped to win.
It will only be on March 17, 2020 that the UDC NEC is expected to meet and discuss many issues that are currently pending.
UDC leadership has not been providing guidance on how the UDC legislators should debate the State of the Nation Address (SONA) last year and the recent Budget Speech. “It would have assisted the UDC MPs to speak with one voice. This was supposed to happen,” he said referring to leadership providing proper guidance on their debate in parliament.
“Unless the petitions were properly sanctioned by a properly constituted structure of the UDC. The decision to petition the election results has never been part of any structure of the UDC.”
Otherwise, the BCP has had cluster regions evaluating the results of the 2019 general election as a single entity.
“I am certain the BCP cadres are happy with the UDC union given the improved 2019 general election results. The UDC has come up strongly as a force to reckon with,” Gobotswang declared diplomatically.
He sees the UDC as a vehicle that will take the opposition forward disagreeing that the BCP cannot go at it alone in elections. The BCP vice president recalls last year July at the Baisago, UDC conference resolving that parties contracted to the UDC should consider merging to form a single and solid party.
He feels that the discussions on the merger should have long started to allow thorough engagements, which will also culminate with the UDC first elective conference. Currently, the UDC is operating under a transition arrangement. “A very serious organisation like the UDC should democratise.
We should be pursuing a revised UDC constitution to be registered with the registrar of societies,” he observed. He further denied fissures in the UDC leadership so far insisting: “We are united and no issues of disagreements and no debate showing divisions.”
To him, the UDC is the future and the leadership is agreeable about that. He also feels that both the BPP and the BNF probably share similar sentiments.
Gobotswang feels that it’s upon the UDC leadership as a collective to provide leadership and come up with political programmes going forward.