| I |
T IS not surprising that the birth of the Democratic Congress (DC) and its ascendance to power has dominated the news this week.
That is only natural.
What Scrutator finds surprising is that in all this frenzy no one has bothered to analyse how that palace coup reflects on Pakalitha Mosisili’s leadership skills.
So, as usual, Scrutator will set the ball rolling by stating without fear or favour that the DC and its palace coup clearly indicate failure on Mosisili’s part.
Far from portraying him as a visionary leader the spectacle we witnessed this week shows him as a desperate man who resorted to desperate measures to outmanoevre opponents in his party.
There is a whole difference between scheming and leading.
The DC is a product of political scheming.
It is an underhand project concocted for self-preservation and nothing else.
It is a party sustained by personality cults and not strong political ideals.
Mosisili has emerged as a leader who when he failed to sort out the problems in his party decided to pack his bags and leave.
But before he left he sunk a sharp and long dagger into the party that has made him who he is today.
| W |
hen things did not go his way he decided to kill the party. That alone reflects badly on him as a leader of either the DC or LCD government.
But it goes further than that.
There can be no doubt that Mosisili failed to keep the LCD together.
He failed to work with a committee he was supposed to lead.
He failed to work with a committee that was elected by the people, never mind that the committee itself might have made it difficult for him to relate.
Mosisili’s biggest failure is that he failed to unite and sustain the party.
When the going got tough he dropped the LCD like a hot potato.
Instead of rising above the petty squabbles of his juniors he got involved and soiled his hands.
And when he could not untangle himself from the web of factionalism he decided to leave the party.
Scrutator is convinced beyond reasonable doubt that although Mosisili remains the prime minister he is not as victorious as his supporters might want to make him out to be.
The truth is that he is the one who left the party, he wasn’t chased away.
He is the one who was defeated by a committee he was tasked to lead.
The reason he hung on to the LCD for all these tumultuous years is because he really wanted to remain in the LCD.
He only left because he realised he had lost the battle.
You will be gullible, silly or both to believe the propaganda that Mosisili and his cliqué left the LCD willingly.
He fought a long and bruising battle with the committee and he is the one who threw in the towel.
If he is a unifying leader as his backers want us to believe then why did he give up on the party he had led for 15 years?
| N |
ow history will remember Mosisili as the leader who left his party to protect his ambition or that of his chosen one.
He will be remembered as the prime minister who rose against his own government.
He will be remembered as the leader who alienated his party leadership and eliminated his party from government.
Scrutator is still trying to get answers on what real issues the so-called LCD factions were fighting over.
Surely by now we must have heard what concrete issues led to this split but we won’t because there were none.
This was a fight for power and nothing else.
Even Mosisili himself cannot stand atop Thaba Bosiu and enunciate the fundamental ideological differences that led to this split.
If he wants to be honest he will probably hazard some five reasons to explain why the LDC split: power, power, power, power and power.
| W |
hat really gets Scrutator’s blood boiling about the events of this week is that a group of men masquerading as the people’s messengers have sabotaged a sitting government.
The prime minister has sabotaged his own party.
And he has done it in the most unoriginal of ways.
In forming the DC Mosisili has done to the LCD what his mentor Ntsu Mokhehle did to the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP) in 1997.
Whichever way you look at it what Mokhehle did in 1997 and what Mosisili has done this week is pure sabotage.
One day we had a government elected by the people of this country and the next morning we have a government cobbled through chicanery.
What the masterminds of the DC have done is to spit into the people’s faces and tell them that they can form a government without a proper election.
They have shown that in this country the whims of a small ambitious cliqué can override the will of the majority.
The DC government might have been formed constitutionally in parliament but that doesn’t mean it has the people’s mandate.
The people of this country might want a new government but they never said they wanted it to come through some palace coup.
This DC government, no matter how temporary is going to be, has come to power through the backdoor.
It is a thief of power.
Those that will form part of this government can ravel in the new found power but they must remember that they are eating stolen things.
What happened in parliament is a coup against the people of this country.
History teaches us that the people rise against their governments but this case a clique has risen against the people.
It doesn’t matter how many people in the LCD gave the clique the so-called mandate to form the DC.
It doesn’t matter how many people crossed the floor in parliament.
| W |
hat happened in parliament is morally wrong. It was a dubious and thoroughly wrong way of gaining and maintaining political office.
You see, you cannot topple a democratically elected government because your party is in tatters.
You cannot change a government because you have failed to win factional fights within your own party.
You cannot simply change a government because you have fallen out with your leadership.
The DC might claim that they have consulted the LCD grassroots but Scrutator cannot understand how that justifies their actions.
It is an undeniable fact that in any election there are what we call independent voters, people who are not members of any political party but they still vote for political parties.
It cannot be denied that the LCD received some votes from those independent voters.
Were those people consulted by this clique when it decided to topple the LCD government?
Also, the so-called LCD supporters that are said to have been consulted when the DC was being formed voted for the LCD as a government and not the DC.
Anyone who wants to remove a government needs to ask these people to vote in a national election.
| B |
ut having said all that Scrutator will not waste a tear for Mothetjoa Metsing and his national executive for they have shown that they have neither the spine to fight Mosisili nor the teeth to bite him.
That is what happens when political novices combine forces.
Metsing took a knife to a gunfight.
True, he might not have been beaten fair and square but he only has himself to blame for getting thumped.
Scrutator’s advice: Worry not DJ Waters for your jams might still be music to some people.
Now you have to learn how it feels to be in the opposition.
Ache!
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