It’s easy to botch primary elections, but it’s unusual to do so in a scale that the Botswana Democratic Party has been doing over the last few weeks.
Nothing better captures the gravity and depth of the party’s troubles than the glaring gaffes that have now come to be such a defining character of the party’s primaries.
First, it was Francistown West, followed by a myriad of disasters that has somewhat instructive gotten to be called block “A”.
For those of us who saw it coming, it has not been surprising that even some of the winners are now calling for a re-run. It is a sign of the times. Nobody has any trust left in the system.
It is hard to understand what Botswana is currently going through without a proper analysis of just how the BDP was bought at its last congress in Maun.
The recreation of the political landscape that people are only now starting to complain about effectively started at Maun three months ago when a few men carrying bag loads of money entered the scene and took charge.
The promise was that henceforth the party would be run like a business entity.
Things have however turned out so badly that over the last two weeks all of the moneymen have gone underground ÔÇôliterally.
As we speak the Head of State has cancelled the Francistown West by-election. On Friday opposition parties went to court in protest and lost. Other than soothing their vanities, there was never a need to go to court.
Courts are hardly ever a good platform for resolving political problems.
In the meantime, the BDP still does not have a candidate in Francistown West.
The whole thing has been a sham.
The wheels are coming out.
The whole country is in a gridlock because the BDP could not elect competent people at its Maun Congress in July.
Instead of eIecting people who could put in place systems to run an election, the party allowed itself to be bought at a song; and now all of us are paying a heavy price to get the party back.
Until the Maun saga is corrected, the entire country is headed for an abyss.
For a man who has done so much to convince a skeptical world that he is a democrat, cancelling an election in such a typically African manner like he did must have been the most painful, humiliating and emotionally draining thing for President Ian Khama.
For him it has been an own goal against all that he has been telling the world he stood for.
President Khama deserves some sympathy.
Cancelling an election just a day before it’s held on account of reasons so far adduced has had an effect of undermining the democratic credentials that he has labouriously worked to cultivate.
Robert Mugabe must be laughing his lungs out.
He is now in good company. Yesterday’s accuser is today’s accomplice.
Ours is a President under siege.
Knowing fully well that his troubles are from beginning to the end political, the generosity shown him by the High Court judges that he is within his powers to postpone the election will be a little mercy of no consequence to himself.
This is because he wakes up this morning to see himself still surrounded by the same incompetent Central Committee that put him and the country through the mess that he is now required to clean up.
It may be Francistown West today, but who knows what will be next?
Unless he identifies his Central Committee as a danger to the very democracy he often tells us he is a custodian of, President Khama will next year October have an unenviable task of postponing a national general election because his Central Committee would have failed to conduct primaries for his beloved and we dare say, indispensable BDP.
Unless he acts decisively, what has happened will put paid not just to President Khama’s political dignity, but legacy as well.
I doubt that President Khama wants to go down into history as a President who cancelled General Elections in order to save the BDP from itself. This is especially so because as we often say, the BDP needs Khama much more than he will ever need it.
Lest we forget, we must once again ask ourselves just how we ended up here.
The next few will be crucial.
Khama must show courage. He must either sack those that have embarrassed him and the country by taking the BDP through the gutter or call a BDP Special Congress to help him sort out the mess.
