A few weeks after the former ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) was reduced to a pale shadow of itself in the just passed General Election on October 30, it was only logical that you take a conscious decision of resigning from the party. This was before you could be pushed out of the position by irate party diehards who feel you did not do enough during your tenure as the head of the party secretariat.
We know that it is at the party secretariat where the heartbeat of a party is anchored. Remember, you led a well resourced party when you went into the 2024 General Election. The party only lacked proper direction.
When we look back, it’s apparent that indeed you did not inspire the party that ruled the country for 58 years to any confidence. We remember that it was under your tenure as the secretary-general that the BDP held highly tumultuous, divisive and polarised primary elections that left a lot of party diehards bruised.
Worse, your party did not offer people who were dissatisfied with the outcome of the primaries a listening ear. We take that; you deliberately chose to be masters of the people rather than being the servants.
Party internal issues were not helped by the swelling concerns that the BDP government was not people centric but rather focus was ‘only on yourselves’.
The function of the party secretary-general, who also sits in the party central committee amongst others, is to tell the entire party central committee the truth about the state of the party rather than distorting the facts.
Somehow, Kario, and some members of the current central committee long realised you were not adding any value to the BDP and kept on holding a view that the party was destined to win the 2024 polls without proper systems in place to assist the party win such.
If you could have looked back at the party going into the 2019 General Election, you would agree with us that you should have learnt a lot from your predecessor. Mpho Balopi had helped the party attain a better popular vote in the 2019 General Election. In the 2014 General Election, with former president Ian Khama at the helm, the party popular vote had plummeted to below 50 % in Khama’s second term as the State President.
Balopi helped the party redeem itself, raising the popular vote to over 50%, which gave the party confidence that it was really relevant. The former president Masisi-led BDP could have basked in the glory that the former ruling party was popular and would remain in power until Jesus came again.
We wish the rest of the BDP leadership that has failed the party should follow suit and resign from their positions before the angry party diehards force them out. A meeting of the BDP regional leaders recently, expressed a worry about the excessive powers of the party president rendering him/her very powerful and recommended the party constitution to be amended to hold non-performing party leaders accountable.
We hope BDP leaders who have failed the party masses should not hide behind their fingers, but rather resign and allow young Turks to redeem the fortunes of the party before it collapses into obscurity.
Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”
– Herman Hesse
