Deliberately playing against eachother was an easy way to avoid the frustrating issue of friendly-fire, but much of the Government's appeal was lost because members didn't want to play against eachother - it honestly felt like members were trying to fix the issue of accidental friendly-fire by enforcing deliberate friendly fire.

The same reason that they couldn't see that this was an obvious mistake is (more or less) the same reason that friendly fire had become such a big issue - it's like nobody had the imagination to properly address and fix it.