FORM ONE PARTY
Former president of the Botswana Congress Party's Youth League (BCPYL), Tlhabologo Furniture, believes that instead of forming coalitions, opposition party leaders and their followers should consider merging their parties into a single political entity to contest the 2024 general elections.
Since 1998, opposition parties in Botswana have engaged each other in coalition talks before nearly every general election. Tragically, none of the efforts achieved the main intention of the negotiations as they ended with more fissions than fusions leading to the collapse of the coalition project.
“Instead of a coalition, the opposition parties must consider a total merger of the opposition parties. A merger would save the parties from the reality of having to go through lengthy and difficult negotiations on the eve of every election pertaining to ward and constituency allocation. That has been happening for decades,” Furniture said.
Some of the opposition coalition projects were the People’s Progressive Front (PPF), the Botswana Alliance Movement (BAM), Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) and now the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC).
Due to a fallout between the Botswana National Front (BNF) and Botswana Peoples Party (BPP) on the one hand and the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) on the other, there is a likelihood that a new coalition consisting the
BCP, Alliance for Progressives (AP), Botswana Labour Party (BLP) will emerge.
Furniture is of the view that over and above the current concern, coalition governments are never sustainable and often end in disaster.
"My honest belief is that should the parties embrace and adopt the idea of a merger of opposition parties, the next step would then be to go for a congress of the like-minded parties and constitute an interim committee where all the parties are represented equally,” Furniture opined.
According to him, the interim committee, in which all the stakeholder parties would be equally represented, would lead the party to the 2024 general elections before an elective congress is held in July 2025.
The 35-year-old Furniture, who aspires to contest the Tati East constituency as a Member of Parliament in the 2024 general election, told The Midweek Sun that so far he has been selling his idea to individuals especially in the BCP and not party structures.
“The only structures I have talked to are the Tati East ones and they are amenable to the proposal. I will soon be lobbying structures from the other constituencies. My hope is that our party congress this July will deliberate on the idea,” said the optimistic Furniture who, however, admits that whet he wishes for may not be easily achievable.
“I am aware of the prevalence of trust issues which are fuelled by the toxic disagreements in the opposition talks over the years. Such toxicity has always led to the several collapses of the talks over the years,” Furniture admitted.