When Wynter Mmolotsi, the Member of Parliament for Francistown South, formerly told the nation at a press conference in Francistown recently about his expulsion from the BDP and his membership of the BMD, he meant to demonstrate, by parading whole committees resigning from the BDP, that his erstwhile party, is, at best, a party in terminal decline, or, at worst, a collapsing party not worthy of running the government any more.
Two days later, the BDP secretary general, Thato Kwerepe and executive secretary, Comma Serema, with guns blazing, told a press conference that the absence from the BDP of Mmolotsi and the others, who have formed the new party, will not affect the performance of the BDP in the next elections. As far as they are concerned, the BDP, unlike the Botswana Peoples Party and the Botswana National Front who have suffered splits that they are yet to recover from, is too big to be affected by the split. This is despite the fact that the BMD was formed by members of the Barata-Phati, the then BDP faction which, if the central committee results at the BDP congress in Kanye last year are anything to go by, was the more popular of the two factions. Barata-Phati won almost all the central committee positions at the congress.
