Ntuane blames himself for Moitoi’s loss

MAUN: Member of Parliamentfor Gaborone WestSouth, Botsalo Ntuanehas blamed himself for PelonomiVenson-Moitoi’s Botswana DemocraticParty chairmanship race lossto Guma Moyo over the weekend.Ntuane was tasked with heading thecampaign team for Moitoi ahead ofthe Maun national congress. He hassince apologized to the latter’s supporters.Ntuane said when they startedthe campaign for the chairmanshipthey had two candidates, beingPatrick Balopi and Moitoi. “Wediscussed the issue of having twocandidates and we opted for onecandidate.

 

Those who supportedeither Moitoi or Balopi starteddiscussions on the way forward.We had to have one team to thecongress. It took a month for thenegotiations to be concluded. Finally,Balopi accepted when Moitoiasked him to pave way for her. Thatis when we started putting togetherthe campaign lobby list. When westarted to campaign for the congress,time was short. On the otherhand our colleagues (Moyo’s team)had already long started their campaign,”Ntuane.He said the negotiations tooktime but it was unavoidable becausethey needed to be done. “Ithink as Africans we need to learnto assume responsibility. I was acampaign coordinator. Our lobbylist did not succeed; therefore I doaccept personal responsibility forour failure to win.

 

 

There are circumstancesthat contributed to theoutcome but ultimately as the campaigncoordinator the buck stopswith me. Publicly I need to say toour supporters, bagaetsho; I assumeresponsibility for the failure.I am very sorry about the outcome,I wish to apologize to you for thecongress outcome. The democratshave spoken, and we must respectthe will of the democrats. PerhapsI could have done better,” he said.Ntuane said considering the limitedtime they had in the campaign,he believes they have done well.“We wanted to achieve a balance.From long time the party had factions.The team that we put for thecongress was the mixture of the Ateamand Barata Phathi. That wasa strategy to kill those traditionalfactions within the BDP.

 

 

If at all wecommitted any mistake in the buildup for Maun it could be that we tookvery long to fi nalize our negotiationwith Balopi’s camp,” he emphasized.Though he was disappointed thattheir candidates did not succeed, hesaid, “We celebrate the fact that wehad a very peaceful congress. Thebiggest winner after the congress,we believe, is the party. When aparty goes for elections, there arealways different people who wantto contest for the elections. Thosepeople have supporters. Those supporterssuggest lobby lists. We hadour lobby list to contest the Mauncongress but the democrats voted inthe majority for the other lobby list.We accept that, because in an electoralprocess there must be a winner.We are committed to the new centralcommittee and we support it,”he said.He however, called for change ofthe electoral system.

 

 

“We cannot afforda situation where elections runinto the night,” he said.Meanwhile, Moitoi has notblamed anyone for her loss. Shesaid that when there is more thanone person contesting, there is alwaysa winner and the winner mustbe supported because at the end ofthe day they remain one party.