The Letlhakeng West constituency is where the BDP won a hotly-contested by-election recently at which President Ian Khama ordered a temporary shutdown of ministries to deploy the Cabinet Ministers en bloc to campaign for the party candidate. Local supermarkets were roped in to pamper potential voters with groceries, ostensibly to be paid for in cash or in kind by government later. Omang office staff were intercepted distributing identity cards to enable BDP members who had not regularised their expired Omang cards at the Omang offices in time to avoid disqualification at the imminent polls. Desperation to win the by-election reflected in the temporary shutdown of ministries to beef up the campaign team on the ground would have been evidenced by the reckless promises to voters.
Though the villagers kept their side of the bargain, it transpires now, the ruling party failed to keep their side of the bargain and the voters have now concluded, it is their time to retaliate by withholding their vote by not registering for next year's general elections. Poor creatures, they believe their abstinence will hit the government where it hurts! The decision is unwise and born of ignorance of the objectives of the general elections, namely to give the electorate an opportunity to elect another party which can better the performance of the party that has been in power or to reelect the same party in case its performance has been as expected. It must be admitted that the Letlhakeng West villagers are not alone in believing that the best method to hurt a party in power is to withhold one's vote. It has not dawned on such voters that the general elections is an opportunity to assess the political party in power whether it qualifies to proceed to the next standard, in this case the next period of government; it does not dawn on these voters that to stay away from the polls is an equivalent of automatic promotion, which guarantees that the 'child' continues to fail because it progressed to the next standard, not on merit but on the mercy of the education system that promotes the child automatically, not as a result of the said child's performance in class.
