My father has no problems with opposition unity- Saleshando Jr

The leader of Botswana Congress Party (BCP) Dumelang Saleshando has revealed that his father and former leader of BCP, Gilson Saleshando has no problems with an opposition coalition.Dumelang rubbished allegations doing rounds that his father is behind BCP’s refusal to join opposition.

Before the 2014 general election, BCP entered into cooperation talks with other opposition parties. When the talks collapsed due to disagreements over constituency allocations, the BCP took the blame. The party went ahead and contested the election alone only to perform dismally than had been expected. Critics of the party immediately blamed Gilson Saleshando as the main cause of the change of mind on the part of the BCP.

They blasted the Saleshando family for running the party like a family affair, something which Saleshando senior vehemently denied in a recent interview. The current president of BCP revealed to this publication that he had once sat down with his father to talk about opposition coalition and the old man had no problems with the opposition unity. “I admit that I once had a private talk with my father on opposition coalition but not in any detail. It is also not recent and at the time we discussed the issue he had no problems with BCP joining other opposition parties”, he said.

Asked about the current stance of his father on the issue since their last discussion, he said that what he knows is that his father has never been against the unity of opposition. “Our current problem as a party is not that we are not for opposition coalition. The problem is that people expect us to just put pen to paper as if we are not an existing entity. BCP is a party which has a lot of people who have its interests at heart and it will be illogical to just jump into the “moono” bandwagon before consulting and ironing out some differences with the other parties. We will eventually work with other opposition parties after putting our own house in order.

There are a lot of things to consider before putting anything on pen and paper”, he said reassuringly. For his part, Saleshando Snr said that the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) will suffer its first-ever loss since independence as a result of opposition unity in 2019.  When quizzed about father-son talk with Dumelang, he admitted that they once had a brief talk on the possibility of BCP joining UDC. “I do not have any problems as long as the coalition is done in the best interest of the party. All stakeholders should be satisfied. I am a former leader of BCP and as such I cannot influence its leadership since a political party is not “bogosi” which is a family thing. BCP is a Botswana brand not a brand of the Saleshando family.”