'I BEAT YOU IN FIVE RECOUNTS'
Monkagedi Gaothobogwe | Monday December 9, 2013 16:47
'I am relaxed because the election results were verified five times after some concerns that were raised by some unhappy contestants.
'There was the first counting and verification, which was followed by four more verifications by counting agents. That hall was full, the counting was transparent and there was no protest ever raised,' he said.
Mzwinila added that the counting agents 'signed for results indicating that there were no protests registered. According to the rules, whoever is unhappy has to register their unhappiness on the spot, you cant protest later.' Mzwinila, who was disqualified in the 2008 Bulela Ditswe after some electoral irregularities, beat four others in this year's primaries, including Somolekae who lost by three votes.
In Tobane, where Somolekae won, there is also concern by her campaign team and four council candidates that the 964 hidden membership cards that were later found after the elections had de-franchised the majority of voters in the ward that she counts among her strongholds. But Mzwinila argued that no one could claim ownership of people who did not vote as voting is by secret ballot. 'I can also claim that those were my voters, actually those 964 voters are mine', said the specially elected councillor in Sowa town
Mzwinila the brilliant intellectual
More than 10 years ago Mzwinila was unveiled to the Botswana market in style as a high-flying graduate of Yale University, USA, as he scooped several Youth Awards for his academic brilliance on a night he was hailed as a rare breed of highly educated youth. With a Masters Degree in Economics, BSC in Economics, Masters Degree in Psychology and Degree in psychology, Mzwinila can count himself among the very rare.
Dr Somolekae was
already celebrating
The Mmadinare constituency Bulela Ditswe results will go down as one of those awkward ones. The Monitor is informed that Somolekae, sure that she had beaten her challenger by well over 80 votes, was already celebrating and receiving congratulatory phone calls and text messages on the night the final results gave victory to Mzwinila.
Reminiscent of 2008
Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) councillor for Mogapi, Joseph Dintwa, is not surprised by rumours of rigging in the constituency by the youthful Mzwinila.
In 2008, Dintwa, then with the BDP, exposed Mzwinila for electoral fraud which resulted in him being suspended. Dintwa said that at the time he noticed that there were 85 fraudulent membership cards in his wards.
'I fought hard and Mzwinila was suspended. I noticed that there were many cards with strange seven figures, while the BDP's real membership cards for the Mmadinare constituency only had five figures,' he said.
'Those cards were planted all over the constituency so that the same voters could be moved around the polling stations to vote as many times as they could. The fake voters' cards unfortunately had ended into the BDP's voters' roll, but I was able to pick some irregularities and exposed him.'
Mzwinila, however, would be drawn into discussing circumstances that led to his suspension from Bulela Ditswe in 2008. He said he was not interested in the past because the reasons for his disqualification back then were well documented.