UB SRC in conflict with outgoing council

CHANDAPIWA BAPUTAKI
Staff Writer | Friday April 16, 2010 00:00

This follows an incident this week which saw the new leadership GS26, a Botswana Democratic Party's affiliate sweeping all the posts and the outgoing leadership, Mass Botswana National Front (BNF) refusing to hand over the office. The elections were held on March 31 and this week the GS26 forcefully took over the office and locked them demanding that the dispute be resolved first.  The UB management has now intervened through the institution's legal advisor David Fani who has ruled that the outgoing leadership did not follow the constitution by taking too long to resolve issues emanating from the election, as a result delaying the handing over of the offices. While the inauguration is pegged for today, the outgoing SRC has said it would not be part of the event as the management 'was siding with GS26.'

'We are not interested in whatever they are saying. Right now all we want is for them to hand over the office because they lost the elections. The matter is being dealt with at management level now and not the SRC level,' president-elect Gobe Taziba said.

Taziba explained that the constitution states that if there are matters arising from elections of the leadership, they have to be reported within 24 hours and the new leadership has to be take over the office within 48 hours. He said they took the decision to lock the offices to initiate action from management to resolve the issue. 'The outgoing SRC was referring any matters from the students that needed their attention to us even though they had not handed the offices to us. In the process this affected students, the UB clubs and associations and the whole student community, as the offices were not being used for their intended purpose,' Taziba said.

According to the outgoing SRC general secretary Mojaki Molekanye the GS26 won the election two weeks ago but their inauguration was delayed by complaints of fraud during the elections. He said when a complaint has been lodged with the elections officer within 24 hours of the elections, he assesses the complaints and passes them to the SRC president who then establishes a commission to look into them before a final decision is taken. 'As of now a final decision has not been taken because the constitution does not stipulate a time frame,' he said.

'They have not been inaugurated, the current SRC has not been dissolved and the SRC President has not yet stated a date for the inauguration, so we are equally surprised at their behaviour for people who are not recognized as SRC,' the secretary general said. 'There were complaints after the elections that some ballot papers were found in trenches and over 100 students from the Faculty of Engineering and Technology did not appear in the voters' roll and they did not vote,' he said.