Internal Squabbles Beckon At Gunners
Kabelo Boranabi | Monday July 27, 2020 16:38
Most Gunners supporters’ branches leadership gathered at Lobatse Civic Hall with the notable exception of the Gaborone West branch.
The branch has openly supported ousted former Gunners chairman, Tariq Babitseng who was removed from office in November after falling prey to a motion of no confidence from the members.
Since then, an interim committee led by George Kerekang has been holding fort. Their term was supposed to come a conclusion at the Saturday’s meeting. The branch has been blowing hot and cold with current club leadership and according sources, intending to use the weekend’s meeting to remove the current committee.
They bemoaned what they termed Babitseng’s dismal at the club. However, the executive committee elections were called off, as the meeting could not form two thirds of the club’s membership due to the government COVID-19 restrictions.
“Those people are not members of Extension Gunners. They have failed to pay the P200 subscription and the deadline was in June. We did an extension since we are dealing with COVID-19 and they still failed to subscribe. We cannot entertain people who are not members of Gunners and we cannot compromise constitutional propositions for people who fail to do right even when they were given a chance to do so,” Gunners’ communication manager, Gerald Mahumba told Monitor Sport.
He however expressed worries over the group’s failure to subscribe but shot down any possibility of a coup.
“They cannot have a say in the team because they have not subscribed thus meaning they are not members. We are worried of course because we need members. The club needs registered members to move forward. We are meeting this week to find out why some branches did not pay up, maybe then we will have a valid explanation to this,” Mahumba said.
Speaking at the AGM, Kerekang said his committee was moving towards improving the club’s governance policy as they inch towards commercialisation.
“One of the things we looked at was improving governance and bring back trust in the club. The club’s standards have lowered in terms of governance. So we need to come up with procedures that will bring the trust back to attract more paying supporters and investors. We have come up with a finance policy that will guide the team in a way of improving proper accounting. This, we believe, will help in bringing back the trust in us. Gunners is in debts and has a poor finance management system,” he said.