115 BDP members nominated for council

Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Thursday November 27, 2014 13:15

 

Officials at the ministry responsible, Local Government, find nothing wrong with the heavy imbalance in favour of the ruling party.

The response  to Mmegi questions was that in considering nominations for Councillors, qualities looked at were educational qualifications and gender amongst others.

“When constituting Councils, the Minister takes into consideration the experience, qualifications, gender balance, youth and other disadvantaged groups within a particular locality. 

Taking all this into consideration, it should not be construed that the ruling party dominates specially nominated Councillors,” was the response from the ministry.

However, on Tuesday, the minister of Local Government and Rural Development, Slumber Tsogwane was unable to provide Parliament with an answer on the number of those who were candidates for the ruling party in the just ended general elections.

The minister was answering a question by MP for Francistown South Wynter Mmolotsi who wanted to know the number of nominated councillors who were candidates for the ruling party in the October general elections, and how many of them were candidates for Sowa Town. 

Mmolotsi also wanted to know how many of the nominated councillors were losers in the BDP primaries.

“The councillors who were elected are the ones who have wards which fall under constituencies. For nominated councillors they are not on constituency bias.  The same applies for nomination of councillors for Sowa Town Council.” However, the minister said the nominated councillors were not appointed on constituency basis but for council.  The minister said he was also unable to state the number of those people who contested in the BDP primary elections.

Tsogwane’s officials said the minister did not depart from the normal procedure for nomination of councillors but stated that he followed the local government Act, 2012 accordingly. “Where the opposition party is a majority in a Council, they too qualify for a nomination, which they were duly accorded.”

Despite the ministry’s insistence, the opposite seems to be the case.  The October election results show that the BDP only got 46 percent of the popular vote whilst the opposition got 56 percent.