BCP/BNF fights will never end
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Monday January 23, 2023 06:00
The BCP is a BNF splinter party having been formed in 1998 when 11 BNF legislators left ahead of the 1999 election. This bad blood is fuelled among others by members from the two parties who do not easily trust each other.
In some cases, the BNF has been accused of displaying a big brother mentality. In 2014, the BCP withdrew from the UDC negotiations because it was not comfortable with certain clauses of the Memorandum of Agreement. Even though at times they try to cooperate, their cooperation never lasts for long.
Their fights usually emanate from power and control.
The fights have helped the ruling party a lot during the campaigns as Batswana lose confidence in the opposition parties. When stressing the issue, political analyst Lesole Machacha said; “The BCP and the BNF seem not to agree on anything and history has shown that.
What is even shocking is that even some of their members are not ashamed to vote with the ruling party during council elections for chairperson and deputy positions. That on its own shows that both parties cannot work together.
These two parties show that they never agree on anything. The reason why the BCP is resigning from UDC is that it believes the BNF is the major player in UDC. Again, the by-elections and fights for the allocation of wards and constituencies seem to be dividing them even further. There are always complaints of favouritism.
It is time now they engage a consultant when they want to cooperate so that it could help them,” said Machacha. The political analyst also said a consultant could help even to resolve pending differences between the two parties and egos that seem to be in both leadership. He said the other strategy that the two players could deploy is to benchmark in other countries with thriving opposition party cooperation.
Machacha said the strategy could help both the BCP and the BNF to cooperate because the duo contributes a lot to the failure of opposition cooperation in the country. He said if these two big parties do not solve their differences then the ruling party would continue to rule and Batswana are slowly losing confidence in them.
He continued: “Trust and confidence are not easily earned and both parties must know that it is going to be difficult for them to convince the voters again if they do not change the way they do some things. We appreciate as a nation that they tried to cooperate but it has failed.
Therefore they also need to admit it and seek help or an alternative they could use. What also contributes a lot is that their leaders put their personal interest at the forefront than the interest of the nation.” The political analyst said it has also become clear that the other issue that comes into play when cooperation negotiation starts is when some leaders start to think a lot about positions, which leads to the fights.
He said some opposition leaders have forgotten that there are many powerful positions in government. In addition, he said it is time political leaders for the two parties put their differences aside in the coming years and focus on what the nation wants. Machacha said currently the opposition is failing to take advantage of the new constituencies because they are concentrating on their fights.
He also revealed one of the reasons why the BDP continues to rule is that its leaders do not put their education background first or shine about education status quo unlike opposition ones. He said Batswana do not like people who seem to have pride and that is one of the strategy that works well for the BDP leaders for years.
Machacha said opposition parties need to introspect and find out what their main problems are before it gets late. He said they also need to move forward and learn to compromise because failure to do that may cost them elections in the coming years since some Batswana seem to have lost interest in voting because of how they do things.