Saleshando rubbishes BDP accusations
Isaiah Morewagae | Saturday March 1, 2014 19:08
Ministers Peter Siele, Patrick Masimolole and Shaw Kgathi implied that the recent workshop conducted by United Kingdom’ Labour Party amounted to a coup.
“The words uttered by the three cabinet ministers are not only grossly mischievous and calculated to score cheap political points in an election year, but are also down right irresponsible and should not have been made in this House. Allegations of a coup against a democratically elected government can never be taken lightly, particularly when they are made by people who occupy positions of national leadership,” Saleshando said.
He stressed that BCP has a relationship with the British Labour Party adding that it is not a secretive relationship promoting any clandestine agenda. Instead, he said it is a relationship that they have always made public and is based on shared political values and ideology.
Saleshando pointed out that the BCP is not the only party that has maintained contacts with a political party in Great Britain. “The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) has relations with the Conservative Party while the Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD) has relations with the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom.
Through its relationship with the Labour Party, Saleshando said the BCP like other parties in Parliament, has benefited from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, a UK based organisation promoting democracy. He stressed that the assistance has taken the form of training workshops that are geared at capacitating their party.
“Strong political parties are an important link in the chain of democracy and Botswana as a multi party democracy must celebrate attempts to strengthen the political parties of this country as they are the vehicles through which the public can express their political aspirations,” Saleshando said.
Saleshando said it is hypocritical of the BDP to suggest that financial or technical assistance that emanates from a credible and transparent foundation should be shunned upon.
“In the history of Botswana politics, the BDP is the leading pioneer of sourcing funds from foreign based political foundations. In the early 1990’s the BDP was supported by a German based foundation known as the Frederich Ebert Foundation, as indicated by the record of Garekwe versus The State criminal case of 1993. This sponsorship was never made public and only got to be public knowledge following the embezzlement of the funds by the party employees. For many years the BDP has been receiving financial support from the Communist Party of China,” Saleshando said.
He said the BDP activists have no moral authority to lecture anyone about transparency in resource mobilisation.
“We have no objections to the cordial relations that the BDP has maintained with the British Conservative Party and the assistance they have received from them. They should accept that as a government in waiting, the BCP has every right to collaborate with political formations that subscribe to the values of social democracy, which is the basis of our policy framework,” he said.