ABC is crying out for a unifier

THE ruling All Basotho Convention (ABC) will meet to elect a new party leader this weekend. The elective conference comes at a time when the ABC, which was the darling of the masses at the last elections in 2017, is at its weakest. Four candidates – Prime Minister Moeketsi Majoro who is currently the deputy leader, Samuel Rapapa, Samonyane Ntsekele and Nkaku Kabi – are all vying to succeed Thomas Thabane as party leader. At the time of writing, it was not clear who among the candidates was likely to win. This elective conference is significant because this is the first time that leadership is changing hands in the ABC since its formation 16 years ago. The new party leader who will emerge from the conference this weekend will have the chance to recalibrate the party after what has been a disastrous five years. At the tail-end of Thabane’s tenure, the ABC hovered from one crisis to another, with Thabane involved in incidents that seriously dented the party’s image in the eyes of Basotho. This is a party that promised to fight rampant poverty in Lesotho but fell short spectacularly in its core agenda. The ABC promised to create jobs for Basotho. It also promised to fight corruption. But most of these promises were never fulfilled. At the end of his troubled tenure, Thabane had completely lost it after he “relinquished” power to his meddlesome wife, ’Maesiah Thabane. Eventually all hell broke loose after Thabane was charged with the murder of his estranged wife Lipolelo Thabane. His resignation as party leader late last year did not therefore come as a surprise. It was long overdue. The new party leader will get a chance to build a new identity for the ABC without Thabane’s shadow looming in the background. He will also need to set the party on a new trajectory, away from Thabane’s soiled past. That is a huge challenge given the levels to which the ABC had sunk over the past two years. The new leader will need to galvanise the grassroots and build the party from the bottom up. We are however not sure though if he will have enough time to do so with a key election due in the next eight months or so. We all know that voters do not live on promises. All they want to see are tangible results. That is why we think it will be extremely tough for the ABC to retain power at the elections this year. This is a party that had lots of goodwill from Basotho just four years ago but squandered the opportunity. The question the new leader must address is: What is the ABC’s selling point this time? More promises to roll back hunger and end poverty? That will be a hard sell. Voters want to know what they did when they had all the power in the last five years. This is the challenge the new party leader must address. If he fails to come up with a credible response, he can as well kiss his electoral chances to win the poll goodbye. The campaign programme has left the ABC bitterly divided. But the party cannot risk getting into the next election divided. This will require that the new leader to be elected this weekend works his socks off to reunite the party. What the ABC needs right now is a unifier. If the new leader fails to unify the party, that will be the end of the ABC as we know it.