Early last week, the Umbrella for Democratic Change announced that their candidate in a by-election in Goodhope/Mabule constituency would not participate in a debate that was hosted by Botswana Television.
UDC deputy leader, Ndaba Gaolathe catalogued a series of his party grievances against BTV.
Chief among them was that his party did not trust BTV to be fair to UDC candidate, Kgosi Lotlamoreng II.
It is however what UDC did not publicly say about BTV that should get us worried.
On the ground many UDC supporters are peeved that BTV has allowed itself to fall into a nefarious trap of using Lotlamoreng’s ailing health to bolster political fortunes of the ruling Botswana Democratic Party. If this is true, then BTV has fallen into the hands of a truly evil Frankenstein.
This is a big indictment on BTV. We have in the past warned that the abuse and misuse of BTV by the ruling party is making the television station not only untrustworthy as a source of news, but perhaps more seriously rendering it irrelevant.
For a party desperate to win an election to say they would forgo free airtime as UDC did with BTV is indeed epochal.
The UDC decision to stay away from the debate has provided an infinitely heroic moment for BTV detractors. All of a sudden, and notwithstanding its admirable national outreach, the station is no longer indispensable.
There is something inherently wrong with BTV.
The station’s handlers should not try to conceal the damage.
For a state television station that has not always inspired public trust, the latest developments take that lack of trust to an altogether new low. The station’s public reputation has now been irreparably tarnished. Going forward political parties will become more, not less emboldened that they do not need BTV after-all to reach their voters. BTV is a victim of a failed leadership.
The truth of the matter is that BTV has become a liability not just to opposition, but more so to the ruling party.
In their quest to carouse the egos of those in power, BTV leadership has in the process driven the station to lose the public trust that the ruling party needs if BTV is to justify itself.
Admittedly, some of the station’s top leadership may have been to journalism schools, yet oddly, they clearly do not know a thing about journalism.
They have gone so up their high horses that they no longer care about fairness, integrity and credibility.
From their exposed evil and nefarious intensions that they wanted to do on Kgosi Lotlamoreng II, it is clear the extent to BTV leaders are prepared to break all journalism rules to save the BDP.
Based on their aborted intentions against Kgosi Lotlamoreng II ÔÇô who they had hoped would crack had he participated in their ill-fated televised debate – some of the BTV top leadership has effectively become evil and narcissist.
For a government journalist to want a candidate to participate in a debate so that they may along the way collapse because their health is not well is supremely un-kindhearted.
That was a plot by BTV, which thankfully UDC strategists in the Barolong by-election were able to see through.
BTV has tested beyond elasticity the notion that it can always run away with people’s minds.
Nobody now believes what they see or hear from BTV.
In fact what BTV says, the audience nowadays resets the opposite to be true.
BTV or BTV, it is now clear that the BDP campaign for the by-election in Barolong has been far from perfect.
Once and for all, that campaign cemented the narrative that BDP is a party on a decline.
And increasingly it now looks like the party leadership is helpless about it.
Whatever assistance BTV might want to render, the BDP is a party headed for more and bigger troubles ahead.
From his body language throughout the campaign it is clear that former area Member of Parliament, Kitso Mokaila has never fully embraced Eric Molale.
Mokaila is absolutely right )in fact justified) to suspect that he lost the constituency In October last year on account of internal designs hatched at the highest levels of the BDP so that Molale could later on be ramped in as an easy shoo-in.
Addressing a political rally at the constituency on Thursday, President Ian Khama said he wanted badly Molale because he is the only one who can carry on with Khama’s agenda when the incumbent President retires.
We have always suspected it. It pretty much explains why Khama has been so much in balk to Molale.
To be fair to Khama he was speaking in Setswana, and that makes it exceedingly hard for us to know if he really meant what he said.
But is the BDP so desperate that it now looks up to Molale as its torch bearer going forward?
It would seem like Molale’s strongest sales pitch is that he has been a senior civil servant.
Oddly we are not being told just what it is that he achieved when he was the country’s most supreme civil servant.
Quite deliberately no mention is also made of how the civil service literally collapsed under his watch, or better still how his tyranny, instead of improving productivity of the public service, made the machinery more unresponsive, more plodding and more spiteful.
Also obliterated from BDP’s version of history is the fact that Molale’s ascendance into the position of highest civil servant had a whiff of favoritism about it; it was Festus Mogae, then his drinking buddy who undeservedly picked Molale to become Permanent Secretary to the President following an almighty fallout between Mogae and the then head of the civil service, the immensely capable and affable Molosiwa Selepeng.
Now Molale is being put through the paces to become the country’s most powerful politician.
A past beneficiary of unfairness into the highest position in the civil service looks set to follow the same path into politics.
If he makes it, as he looks all the more likely to achieve it, Molale’s history in public service would be cemented as a record of trickery and deceit.
For all the doubts we may have had, James Mathokgwane’s well choreographed resignation was all part of a grand plan that started with edging Mokaila out of the Barolong constituency in preparation for Molale.
At the apex of this evil plot sits President Ian Khama ÔÇô determined, self-serving and most of all worried about what the future holds for him.
These are the things with which BTV should concern itself. Not with the health of Kgosi Lotlamoreng II.
