If the noisome and rancorous social media is anything to go by, Sidney Pilane now presides over an empty legal shell. I do not know if that is true. What is fairly obvious though, is that Ndaba Gaolathe is hugely popular both within and outside the BMD. True, Pilane has a reputation for legal prowess.
Whether he is popular in the political sense is gravely doubtable. The Progressives seem sure about their popular strength, hence the audacious move to call for a re-run and failing such, to form a new party. The end game, as regards the new party is, however, still nebulous. The Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) was borne of an acknowledgement that the ruling party was too strong for any singular opposition party to master. It could be that the Progressives believe they can go it alone against the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) juggernaut. It could also be that they are aware of the futility of a duel with the BDP but merely want to consolidate their base before it disintegrates. It could further be that they want to reinvent themselves as a new opposition force, to bury doubts about the numerical destitution of their adversaries, to render them irrelevant to opposition politics and to seek umbrella reentry on own terms. It could well be, again, that the Progressives fancy themselves eventually, as potential kingmakers in a political landscape dominated by the UDC and the ruling party. It could be all of the above and more. The answer lies in the womb of futurity.
