BNF defends record in Francistown West

Chakalisa Dube | Tuesday January 28, 2014 16:38

'Some of our members were helpful in the campaign. Personally I have been there twice.

Other party leaders have been there campaigning as well,' he said in defence of the BNF. He was reacting to claims that parties in the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) did not support their candidate Shathiso Tambula of the Peoples Party (BPP).

Efforts to get a reaction from the other UDC partner, Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) proved futile as the secretary general and spokesman Wynter Mmolotsi was not available for comment.

Tambula finished a distant second with 578 votes behind the winner, Dr Habaudi Hobona of the Botswana Congress Party who got 966 votes.

The by-election was marred by a low turn-out with only 1,829 people casting their votes compared to 8,360 in the 2009 general elections. The BCP secretary general Dr Kesitegile Gobotswang said the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) is to blame for the low turn-out because it did not conduct intensive voter education.

'I believe the IEC did not do much education on this by-election. Of course there are other dynamics such as court cases (which would have resulted in the low turn-out) that surrounded the by-election, but the IEC also failed to come to the party. In previous by-elections the IEC embarked on a more serious voter education but on this one they were less active in educating voters.

Activities like debates were also not scheduled by the IEC which shows that they did not do enough in building the enthusiasm leading to the election,' he said.

However, IEC spokesman, Osupile Marobela has dismissed the allegation saying that they did their part in drilling the voters about the exercise.

'We did our best. We made important announcements about the by-election on radio and newspapers. We also had ward meetings with voters, encouraging them to go and cast their votes but the desire to go and vote lies with an individual. In fact only a few people turned up for the meetings. If they chose not to vote it is something beyond our control.

As for the debates, we have had them in the past in a bid to help boost the enthusiasm of voters leading to a by-election but still a few turned up to vote. The low turn-out does not have anything to do with our programmes,' he said yesterday.

The UDC candidate, Tambula has chosen not to blame the IEC for the low turnout. 'In our case, we targeted 3, 000 voters based on the response we got during campaigns. We wanted to capitalise on the absence of the ruling party.

I think the controversy surrounding the election is the major contributing factor why a few people turned up at the election. I am not a bad loser. I do not want to blame the IEC,' Tambula said yesterday.

He stated that the BPP structures have been dead for some time, which meant that it was not easy for the party to entice many voters in such a short time.

'I believe we revived most structures in the constituency. It is a matter of continuing to work hard to campaign for the general election later this year,' he said.

He refused to respond to claims that UDC partners were not actively involved in campaigns for the by-election.  It is said the failure by the partners to campaign intensively in the constituency led to the poor show by Tambula.