IEC spends P1.5 million on by-elections
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Wednesday April 5, 2017 16:28
Usually, the cost of a by-election is dependent on the size of the polling district and the constituency. “We have had seven council seats by-elections and one Parliamentary by-election.
The Tlokweng one will be the second Parliamentary by-election.
The cost of a council seat is around P110,000 while the constituency one costs around P750,000,” IEC spokesperson, Osupile Maroba said in an interview yesterday.
Despite being costly, by-elections have been praised for keeping politics alive. Selebi-Phikwe West legislator, Dithapelo Keorapetse said by-elections, have kept the momentum.
“The other thing is that opposition parties have agreed to work together which made Batswana happy. Contemporary Botswana politics is more interesting for Batswana.
They (Batswana) want a change of Government. They demonstrated this by voting for the opposition in more numbers (53%) than they voted for the ruling party (46%),” the Botswana Congress Party (BCP) spokesperson said.
Keorapetse said Batswana are more sensitised on topical political issues such as acerbic industrial relations, crises in the Judiciary, the Electronic Voting Machines (EVM) debate, media freedoms and journalists abuse by the state and many other issues.
On other hand, the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) communications chairperson, Thapelo Pabalinga said: “We are a politically active party irrespective of the by-elections.
President Ian Khama and members of the Central Committee are doing round two of party activities where HE is meeting with all regions to check on their statuses and get first hand information on how they are building the party”.
Pabalinga said they are not reliant on by-elections for party activism, but of course when they do happen there becomes a need for activity within the branch that is hosting the by-elections.