Botswana: Vote Splitting in Opposition Will Hand BDP Victory

My attention was attracted to an opinion piece authored by my sister Ms Tumy Modise in her capacity as the BDP Secretary of International Relations and Publicity Subcommittee.

Let me start by concurring with her that the BDP will benefit from vote splitting in the general election. There is, to borrow from her article, empirical evidence that the BDP has benefitted from the said vote splitting in past elections. What me and her should agree on, is to what extent vote splitting will help the BDP to win outrightly.

Having said the foregoing, Ms Modise’s argument is with respect, too partisan for obvious reasons-every party member/activist is promoting their party without highlighting the potential hurdles that could scupper the outright win she predicts. Such hurdles include but are not limited to the socio-economic circumstances voters experience daily-your growing numbers of unemployment whose end result is poverty; collapsed education and health sectors-different categories of medication in public health facilities remain in short supply while it is reported pupils bring tools of the trade otherwise normally provided by schools/education ministry.

Corruption remains a big hindrance for some or all these socio-economic challenges to be meaningfully addressed. There is no indication beyond rhetoric, that her party is decisively dealing with corruption. Since the Auditor General issued a scathing report on COVID-19 corruption back in 2021 or thereabout, no one has been held accountable. Three days away from Batswana casting their votes, we are deeply and directly affected by these challenges. Would a parent whose child is subjected to daily challenges at his/her school be eager to vote for the BDP? Your guess is as good as mine.

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The 2024 Mo Ibrahim report on Botswana indicates the country has experienced significant deterioration on governance overall. This is a serious red flag. In fact, the report puts Botswana’s governance and the Rule of Law failures in the same basket with Eswatini, Mali and Burkina Faso to mention just a few.

My sister misses to mention(for obvious reasons as already alluded to) the internal challenges her party faces consequent to the chaotic bulela ditswe elections. Without saying it, it stands to reason many BDP members (and their supporters) who participated in this process but strongly feel hard done by how their grievances thereto were badly handled, could withhold their votes from the BDP or vote for it’s competitors. And the danger here is that the aggrieved are not only from one constituency but predictably, all the 61 constituencies.

The point I am making to my dear sister is that the BDP “outright win” cannot under the prevailing circumstances, be premised on just one side of the coin. The President of my sister’s party has absolved himself from the on-goings at the DIS yet it directly accountable to him. Given the negative perception of the DIS by some if not all Batswana, wouldn’t this dissuade them from voting for the BDP? It is important to mention that the overwhelming goodwill the BDP received in 2019 may have dissipated with time suggesting the huge numbers it received then could be hard to receive this time around. It is fair to suggest the 2019 whitewash could be far from repeating this time around.

While my dear sister cannot be faulted for predicting an outright win for her party, I respectfully beg to differ with her that an outright win is guaranteed for her party. The ground has shifted in a big way. I am prepared to be persuaded otherwise as always. Let’s talk!

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