High Court slaps Salakae with P21, 000 bill
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Friday January 31, 2020 14:52
The materials were supposed to be used as part of evidence had the case gone on trial.
Salakae’s case, in which he complained about irregularities during the counting of ballot papers on election day was supposed to go on trial yesterday before a High Court bench of Justices Gaolapelwe Ketlogetswe, Itumeleng Segopolo and Omphemetse Motumise but he withdrew the matter.
According to Salakae’s case the materials were found when the court had afforded him the opportunity to inspect all materials used during the 2019 general elections.
Mmegi has learnt that on Tuesday some High court staff members wanted Salakae to pay first for the materials before they could be released. But the Registrar came to his rescue and ordered that he be given the materials.
“Registrar says he will give Salakae the bill and he expect him to pay at the end of the case. Salakae was informed that court charges for every copies that an individual makes,” the source said.
For his part, Salakae said he was aware that the court had to bill him for the copies he had made.
“I know that the court has to bill me for making election material copies for me. But they have not yet informed me about the bill. I needed those materials for my case.
The party is the one which will pay for the material, but I do not understand why the issue of the bill was told to other people before the concerned parties,” he said.
Salakae explained that according to his observation, the materials that were used during election for Ghanzi North constituency the seals that they had put on election boxes were tempered with.
He said the boxes tempered were 20 while the spoiled votes did not match with the ones the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) found.
“The ones we had found is more than 200 and there were ballot papers that did not have serial numbers,” Salakae said.
Mmegi has learnt that Umbrella for Democratic Change (UDC) on Wednesday during its meeting took a decision to withdraw all their election cases before courts on grounds that they would not find fair justice and also that they will not be allowed to appeal any High Court decisions.
This came after UDC lost all its 14 parliamentary cases with costs before Court of Appeal.
Salakae lost to John Thiite of the Botswana Democratic Party who garnered 4, 893 while the former got 4717. The spoiled were 110.