After investing heavily in their campaign efforts to wrestle the Philip Matante Ward in Francistown East from opposition, Botswana Democratic Party ended up with not much to show for it.
Right from the beginning the BDP campaign was beset with controversy.
Buti Billy who is a Member of parliament for one of the city constituencies was supposed to be a campaign manager.
That decision was changed on the last minute when the party headquarters chose Member of Parliament for Tati East Guma Moyo over Buti.
This created divisions.
Things came to a head when at one point it was reported that there had been fistfights Member of Parliament for Francistown West Ignatius Moswaane and Francistown South branch Chairman, Ford Moiteela.
As if that was not enough Moswaane went public to speak in tongues and classified Philip Matante campaign as sensitive.
Moswaane has promised to explain why he classified the BDP campaign as sensitive and also to explain what was needed and what was not needed during the campaign. However Botswana Democratic Party Secretary General Botsalo Ntuane is disappointed by the weekend results.
“The bottom line is as much as we would have wanted to win Philip Matante ward we lost because Umbrella for Democratic Party (UDC) retained their ward. We are obviously disappointed, we worked very hard, especially our campaign team led by Moyo Guma,” said Ntuane
He said it is unfortunate that things did not work out for the Botswana Democratic Party. The BDP is expected to receive evaluation report from the campaign team as soon as they are ready. The evaluation report is expected to speak to what went wrong and map the way forward.
For Moyo Guma the campaign team manager for Philip Matante its water under the bridge. “There was an election and results. We accepted the results and we ended there. The people who were in the voters roll cast their votes so what are we talking about now,” asked Moyo
Out of eight by elections held since the 2014 general elections, Botswana Democratic Party has only won one, the recent one in Sekoma.
In a strange twist of logic, the BDP Secretary General Ntuane strongly believes that his party has not lost a by election since 2014.
He is of the view that opposition parties only retained their wards. He sees the BDP as the biggest winner as they managed to win a ward that was held by the opposition.
