With a few by-elections coming soon, it is important to once again assess the fairness or lack thereof regarding the campaign finances.
Officially, there is no state funding of political parties in Botswana.
This is of course wrong in effect as it in practice.
Practically a ruling party in Botswana enjoys infinite access to state resources for its campaign.
At the moment it is the Botswana Democratic Party that enjoys such benefits.
Those benefits come in multiple fold ÔÇô directly and indirectly.
The rules say that both the Head of State and the Vice President will enjoy state funding for all their travels ÔÇô official and private.
That includes access to aircraft and road transport.
The same perks extend to their security detail.
No such benefits apply to Leader of Opposition.
When it comes to political party campaigning what the President and his deputy often do is to go full throttle by capitalizing politically on these benefits that are rightfully due to them by extending them to other activists especially when long distances are to be covered to political rallies.
The defect in the rules to fail to regards the President and deputy as political contenders ahead of anything else that has semblances of statehood and neutrality.
That is what we saw in 2014 when a military aircraft that was supposed to be carrying the Head of State, who is also commander in chief ended up being turned into a flight carrier for ruling party activists some of who were so visibly drunk to the extent of desecrating the apolitical nature of the military.
It is however important to point out that such benefits come with incumbency and will thus be enjoyed by any party that would one day in the future replace the BDP.
That is however not the point.
The point rather is the imbalances that the arrangement creates.
The point is the distortion it creates.
The point is the denial of equal access to resources among contenders, resulting in an uneven and unbalanced playing field.
That unfortunately also extends to coverage by state media.
In Botswana only the President and his deputy are as a fast rule guaranteed coverage by the state media.
This is a fast and loose rule that allows the two to also decide the content of what the state media covers.
The only saving grace if one can call it that is that the state media has become so discredited and contaminated to an extent that few people nowadays believe it.
The situation is so bad such that what the state media says the public make up the opposite to be true.
Only the State president and his deputy are guaranteed coverage by the State media.
The opposition only gets similar coverage at the grace and instance of senior Government officials at the state media complex a majority of who are themselves ruling party undercover activists.
The structure of Botswana’s economy is dominated by Government.
The private sector is as weak as to be non-existent.
For any private sector company to survive it needs to enjoy some level of Government patronage.
This is a curse.
This means that politicians have a disproportionately high influence on business directions.
Consequently, it is those private companies that have connections to one politician or another that enjoy government patronage.
In fact that applies to the private media.
We have recently seen how some newsrooms in the country have reviewed and aligned their editorial policies so as to appease and placate the ruling party as a way of averting and surviving the onslaught by Government that started when Government instructed its companies to stop advertising with certain newspapers deemed as hostile.
That is how powerful the state is in Botswana.
To be fair to them, the BDP is only taking advantage of the rules as they exist.
Any other player in their position would most likely behave the same way.
The important thing though is to minimize abuse by coming up with a fair rules based approach that recognizes that the playing field has more than just one player.
The BDP has resisted reform.
It is only when there are internal party contests such as when Vice President Mokgweetse Masisi used his privileges to campaign for party chairman that we hear any accusations of unfairness.
The business community is also to blame.
Because they want to ingratiate them with the ruling party, donations from the private sector are only channeled towards the ruling party.
The situation is made worse when one considers the fact that there is a very thin line separating the business and political elites in Botswana.
