Boko responds to 'BNF in messy state' article
Duma Boko | Friday October 25, 2013 16:33
It is even more so in the case of the Botswana National Front (BNF) which attracts the most attention and media speculation. It is important to set out the facts very briefly lest the nonsense being bandied about acquires a semblance of respectability.
In the lead up to the BNF primaries, the party became inundated with membership application forms submitted from the various constituencies by aspiring candidates. These application forms it was discovered:
* were in most cases in relation to existing members who were already in the party data base.
* were in terms of the old constituency configurations unaffected by the delimitation process that took place recently.
* were in such large numbers that the party had to beef up staff and equipment to enable the capture of all the data and its inclusion in the party data base for the generation of voters rolls.
Every single form had to be examined and captured into the data base. The system of data keeping and maintenance at the BNF office is fool proof. Any name or particulars relating to any applicant which are already in the data base are immediately picked out by the system and can neither be duplicated nor deleted. The system is designed to prevent any duplication of members under any circumstances and is able to identify members by name or Omang number. It is thus not possible to even sneak through a transfer from one ward or constituency to another without the system picking that out in the case of an existing member.
Most of the application forms turned out to be mere renewals of membership. This did not however lessen the workload of capturing the information in each application form into the system.
When most of the voters rolls were all but ready it became apparent that many were based on the old constituency configurations as submitted in the application forms.
Against the above backdrop therefore:
The BNF has postponed its primary elections scheduled for this coming weekend in order to tidy up the voters rolls and ensure smooth and incident free primary elections. This is in the best interests of the contestants themselves as well as the party. These are decisions which fall within the powers of the Central Committee and the National Elections Board. In an objective assesment of the amount of work that has to be done to have clean voters rolls, it was determined that an announcement of the date for the primaries be delayed by two weeks in order to attend to the niggling issues of voters rolls and then announce a firm date.
Any allegations that anybody tampered with voters rolls or membership data are completely false and malicious. The capturing of data into the system is done by people of integrity that have no allignments with any group or individual. In view of the situation stated above it is perfectly within the rights of members to raise these issues within the structures and invoke the internal mechanisms of the party to seek directions from the leadership. In other parties that may be sacrilegious, but for us in the BNF such concerns, properly channeled are welcomed and taken very seriously. That is the nature of the BNF. It is open, democratic and transparent like that. The Party is keen to run free, fair and transparent primary elections. To this end it will also put in place interventions to deal with post primary election trauma and frustrations on the membership. These will take the form, among others, of counselling and mediation to ensure that candidates accept the results and rally behind the succesful candidate(s).
While we appreciate and acknowledge the serious inconvenience the postponement occasions to our members we remain confident that they will accept that it is for the good of the party to have an incident free round of primary elections and maintain the stability the party boasts so far.
*Duma Boko is the president of the
Botswana National Front