UDC Palapye meet promises fireworks
Innocent Selatlhwa | Friday July 9, 2021 16:55
Botswana Congress Party (BCP) president Dumelang Saleshando has told the media that the umbrella is wrecked and they intend to have it mended in Palapye. On the other hand, UDC head of communications Moeti Mohwasa slammed Saleshando for washing their dirty linen in public.
But UDC president Duma Boko recently denied any bad blood between him and his deputy, Dumelang Saleshando or their parties. The Leader of Opposition in Parliament says it is time they admit as UDC leaders that all is not well and map a way forward. While it is usually the media asking the questions, Saleshando came prepared with questions and answers UDC members have been looking for concerning the state of affairs at the coalition. He said his party was ready to go back to the drawing board.
“BCP will be attending a UDC meeting scheduled for Palapye over the weekend,” said Saleshando and added: “BCP will be there. There are some things that BCP Central Committee members want us to take forward, and that is, we should accept that we have problems in the UDC.
It is not a secret that as members of the UDC we no longer trust one another as we used to. We have differences as members of the UDC; there is no trust and we can no longer act as if all is well when that is not the truth.”
The BCP president said they disagree on some things publicly amongst them the question of whether they should use the UDC constitution or not. He said there are arguments around the constitution with some claiming that the BNF will always provide the UDC president stating that on the contrary,the constitution says the president shall be elected by a congress. Saleshando said when the BCP joined the UDC, there was an agreement that elections will be held at a congress after the 2019 elections.
“We should agree to talk about the issues we have. If we can do that, we will be taking UDC back to where it should be. We have been running UDC through consensus. Where we do not agree, we go back and look into the matter. This has since changed lately. Now, decisions are made based on majority vote. We will plead with the UDC leadership to go back to consensus. We should not say there are no problems when we can all see. Let’s accept and move on,” he said.
On missing a recent UDC meeting and press conference, Saleshando said, “we have been UDC members for five years attending meetings.
All along if a member was unavailable, the meeting would be postponed without a debate. The last UDC executive meeting was the first to go on when a member was unavailable.
We had asked that it be postponed because I and my vice president had prior arrangements. But, because there is lack of trust, the meeting went ahead without us. We tried to use technology but were denied.
We were told when the meeting was on that they could connect virtually. About the press conference, we did not even have the agenda. It showed there were problems, hence I abstained from the press conference.”
Mohwasa would not be brought to discuss Saleshando’s assertions. “We have of late been made to respond to views which do not represent the popular view or position of the UDC. It would not be proper to respond to an affiliate who has four seats in the NEC and is allowed to participate like any other member therein. We believe that if there are issues to be ventilated, the media is not the right platform unless we have ceased to care about the image and integrity of the movement,” he said.