Things are much worse than they look to the outsider, say insiders in the current opposition talks taking place among Botswana Congress Party (BCP), Botswana National Front (BNF), Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) and Botswana Peoples Party (BPP). According to sources the parties left their last meeting on Sunday in a stalemate, the sticking point being how they should share constituencies. With the spectre of a deadlock looming, the conveners had to ask the parties to go back and deliberate this point.
The parties are said to be no closer to an agreement than when the issue was first brought to the table about two months ago. On one hand, the BMD believes that the constituencies should be shared equally among three parties namely BCP, BNF and BMD with the 2009 General Election results used only to gauge which constituencies are marginal and winnable or not. Meanwhile, the BNF and BCP have maintained their position that parties' performance in the last general election should be used as a measurement of how many constituencies a party should get, such that parties that did well in given constituencies are allocated those constituencies. But the polarisation is getting worse as the parties adopt increasingly hard-line stances.
