FRI, SEPT 07 2018-theG&BJournal-Botswana is well known internationally as the most democratic country in Africa. However Dylan Washington Taylor a 35 year old young Motswana man who has just formed an opposition party in Botswana called Umbrella for Batswana (UB) disagrees. Dylan says that Botswana is a fake democracy and literally a dictatorship because the ruling party Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) owns and controls literally everything in the country including media (public and private) and opposition parties’ leaders.
Dylan says the BDP Government buys opposition leaders using corrupt government tenders and bribes; and then turns those leaders into fake traitor opposition leaders who mislead opposition followers and break opposition parties deliberately so that BDP can continue winning. Apparently this unethical practice has been going on for a long time keeping BDP in power for the past 52 years (the longest in Africa).
Early this year Dylan came up with an initiative to fight this unfair practice. Under this initiative called JAOPPPE (which stands for Joint All Opposition Political Parties Primary Elections) Dylan proposes that all the opposition parties of Botswana should come together and hold joint primary elections in which the winners will go to represent the entire combined opposition in the upcoming 2019 general elections againstBDP meaning that votes will not be split thus increasing opposition’s chances of winning.
Dylan made a video* about the JAOPPPE idea and in it he depicted the fact that BDP has lost popularity such that if opposition was united as one over the past 2014 general electionsstatistics shows that opposition would have won the elections by winning 33 of the 57 parliamentary seats while BDP would have only got 24 seats and lost. Dylan put the JAOPPPE video on Facebook and it was applauded by the majority of Batswana (the people of Botswana) who watched it. But when Dylan took the JAOPPPE idea to Botswana’s mainstream media (newspapers, radios and TV) they refused to publish it. Dylan asked the opposition leaders to endorse or at least talk about the JAOPPPE idea publicly so that the majority of Batswana can get to know about it but the opposition leaders have remained silent for 4 months now, silent about an idea that can guarantee that opposition wins the upcoming general elections.
And as expected the biggest opposition coalition in the country Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) is already breaking apart, one big faction has left and formed a party called Alliance for Progressive (AP) and this breakage guarantees that BDP is going to win the upcoming elections. Dylan believes that the reason why opposition leaders and media of Botswana are shutting down his JAOPPPE idea is that they don’t want the majority of Batswana to know about it, because if Batswana knew about it they would insist on it to be implemented, opposition would unite and win, but unfortunately opposition traitor leaders don’t want that to happen.
Currently many Batswana don’t vote anymore because they see no point in it. The ruling BDP has also made clear its intentions to rig the upcoming elections by forcing Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) to be used against Batswana’s will. Dylan is therefore asking the international community to please help in whichever way they can because Batswana are stuck in dictatorship but their country is falsely applauded overseas as the most democratic in Africa. All in all Botswana’s democracy is worse than that of Zimbabwe because although Mugabe’s ZANU-PF has been allegedly rigging elections but at least they have been facing real opposition (Tsvangirai’s MDC) but in Botswana it appears that BDP has been facing fake opposition all the way meaning easy win and no need to rig.
