Controversy mars UB SRC elections
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Wednesday April 27, 2016 11:47
Despite all these, the results were announced with the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) affiliated GS26, winning crucial seats while the UB-UDC won the most seats.
This means that the BDP is now in control of the key structure, including the presidency, a telling factor as the institution politics tend to have a bearing in the national scope of Gaborone Central constituency. The UB-UDC won eight out of 13 seats, but pocketing only two key positions.
Chief electoral officer Nabadzabo Ngoni admitted in an interview that they uncovered discrepancies during counting, especially in the vice presidency.
“We realised that some people who were not on the voters roll could have voted.
This didn’t affect only one party but all parties. This election had lots of complaints and we received two letters of complaint before elections.
“But the truth is that our committee had to sit down with all candidates to try to solve any problems that might have arisen.
Even today, we called all party representatives and told them our challenge before we could announce the results and they have accepted the results,” Ngoni said.
Councillor for Village ward and also Gaborone City Council mayor Kagiso Thutlwe said although they accepted the results his party would have to assess to see where they could have gone wrong.
“UB is one of the key structures and it falls in my ward.
This result means a lot to us as the Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC). We have to find out what could have happened for UB students to lose confidence in us.
People cannot trust you only to lead them in small positions but fail to trust you in bigger positions, that alone says a lot,” Thutlwe said.
He said their party had not campaigned enough like before due to strained resources.
“I think our focus was on the Phillip Matante East by election,” he said. The UB-SRC presidency was won by Bakotelo Mmipi with 1,744 votes while Gosego Kwenaeile of the UB-UDC got 1,220 votes.
The GS26 won the secretary general position, justice, sports and information while UB-UDC won the vice presidency, treasurer, student affairs, administrative secretary, academic affairs, entertainment, refectory, bar and canteen positions.