For many of us, the ruling BDP has, over the last few years, deteriorated into a monster we never imagined it would become.
Power seems to have gotten the better of their heads.
Not only has the party become insensitive, they are also arrogant and cruel.
If the BDP is not stopped, they threaten to strip this country bare, the same way locusts do when they descend on one’s field.
It is our hope that when their turn at the cherry comes, the current opposition will do things differently.
But the trouble so far is they are not telling us in clear terms what it is that they will do differently.
If there is one thing I have already discerned from some of the opposition parties, it is that they are intolerant.
They do not take kindly to criticism or dissent.
The BDP, as history will bear us out, can be vindictive and, in some instances, outright evil!
If there is one thing that will ultimately burry the BDP, it will have to be corruption by some of the party’s high functionaries.
Unfortunately, the President, though there is no evidence of him being personally corrupt, has demonstrated some soft spots for corrupt people.
To him nothing matters more than loyalty.
If he is not careful, his credibility will ultimately be damaged by his association with these people.
The private sector is replete with stories of how Khama’s close associates are always the ones to exclusively benefit from Government’s lucrative deals.
The current talk is the trans-Kalahari railway line, which we learn has already been divided among the man’s associates.
On a recent trip to West Africa, the President is reported to have sealed multi-billion dollar oil deals with the Nigerian authorities.
The jury is still out, but word is already abuzz that the primary beneficiaries will be the same people mentioned in the railway line that will link Botswana to Walvis Bay.
Talk of insider trading!
Personally, I do not care who the President chooses as friends. It’s all up to him to do it for himself.
But once he has made his choices, he should not cry foul when we question his judgment.
In come the opposition and their media friends!
The fact of the matter is that we will not achieve much if we burry our heads in the sand in our classification of all that is BDP as sadistic and all that is opposition as romantic.
The media in Botswana seems stuck in a non-changing time warp; invariably demonizing the BDP while, against all evidence, humanising the opposition collective.
Now that we learn they are about to take power, it bears changing our mode of operation as the media.
It is wrong to continue granting opposition a blanket leap of faith.
The media has to lead the chorus in pointing out how horrendously wrong it is for opposition to tell the nation “vote us and you will see what we will do for you when we get there”.
The media in general has over the years been guilty of an irresponsible pro-opposition bias.
This has created a culture where opposition politicians now think it is a taboo for them to be confronted with painful truths that expose their shortcomings.
We have reached the levels where opposition politicians literally behave like the media owe them a living.
The tragedy is that while in the past it was pardonable to treat opposition with kid gloves – for they were so weak as to be non-existent – their growth and buoyancy has not been met by a corresponding change with the way they are treated by the media.
A recent change in the dynamics surrounding Botswana’s politics has meant that we should put the days of opposition boosting behind us.
It is high time we hold our opposition politicians accountable, including dragging their feet on hot coal if they fall short of expectations.
There are no longer plausible reasons why the media should continue to mollycoddle the opposition.
Repeatedly, and not without merit, the ruling party has complained of a blurred and, in some instances, diminished line between the private media and opposition.
The friendship has developed as to be entrenched to an extent where we now have opposition politicians literally getting surprised when a journalist writes something they deem to be putting them in bad light.
The upshot of the buddy-buddy relationship has been a seismic media failure that has to be corrected, especially now that the opposition parties tell us state power is within reach.
In fact, for them, the bars of accountability should be raised higher for they came this far not on their own, but rather through a grossly unfair hand holding by the media.
