Sefhare/Ramokgonami committee members quit BCP
Koketso Kgoboge | Friday November 2, 2018 14:48
The constituency chairperson, Tletlano Mmopi and his secretary, Goitsemang Tebagano have resigned from the party, so did Sefhare ward committee chairperson, Oscar Diboko, his deputy William Phuthego and two activists, Marea Segaisi and Gothusang Ratsie.
In their resignation letters, the six advanced common reasons that they have lost confidence in the party leadership especially the vice president, who is also their parliamentary candidate Gobotswang.
The resignations follow a recent mass exodus of the party’s Palapye constituency loyal members. For Gobotswang, this would spell a blow in a titanic fight against Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) in the Tswapong constituency.
Gobotswang is challenging Dorcus Malesu who has convincingly won the Tswapong North constituency in 2014 general elections.
Mmopi alleged the vice president was untrustworthy, and they find it difficult to sell a candidate that they cannot trust. He further alleged Gobotswang used his powers as the party vice president to sneak in a council candidate, Kenanao Badumetse through a back door ahead of the primary elections.
“We were surprised when the writ came out that Badumetse was in the writ. I am the chairperson of the constituency, and according to my understanding, Badumetse was not our member when the membership was closed last year November,” he said.
He added, “I was surprised when Gobotswang admitted in a closed door meeting in the constituency that he assisted Badumetse to cheat their way through. We don’t know Badumetse’s political will, and we can’t sell him. Gobotswang can no longer be trusted with his conspiracies, and we cannot sell a dishonest candidate”.
Sefhare Ward chairperson, Diboko concurred with his comrade. He said Gobotswang even undermined his committee.
“When he comes here, he runs the show alone, undermining our views and yet we are the foot soldiers and we understand the heartbeat of the constituency,” he said.
Diboko further stated that Gobotswang had undone their hard work of recruiting members to close on the over 1,600 voters gap between BCP and BDP.
“We are fighting a losing battle, and the party has regressed because of the cheating and people are losing trust in us, hence we are resigning from the party.”
In response, Gobotswang said he was innocent. He said he only heard through the grapevine that some members have resigned from the party.
He said the party has not received any communication from the disgruntled members at the regional level and nothing has been communicated to the region by the party secretariat.
The BCP vice chair said if the members had problems with the primary elections and its outcomes, they were at liberty to appeal. He professed he did nothing wrong and he had received no complaints from the members.
“There was no appeal in Tswapong north and one would assume that would mean there were no problems with the primaries,” he said.
“I don’t know about the resignations yet, I only heard rumours, but that could be detrimental to our race. We are going in for a close contest and every vote counts even a single resignation is a lost vote that we so much need.”