What can BDP do to Barata-Phathi?

GREG KELEBONYE
Staff Writer | Thursday March 25, 2010 00:00

 

The deadline issued on Monday by the BDP central committee for handing in the cards expired yesterday with the faction members remaining defiant after announcing they are forming a new party.

'What is the point? I burnt mine the day I decided I was not a BDP member. And I am not their member. I don't know what action they say they will be taking, but we will wait to see,' a member of the faction said.

The BDP has however maintained that all those who fail to bring back the cards will be deemed to be members of the party and therefore subject to the party's disciplinary process. 'As we said in the statement that we issued, all so-called Barata-Phathi members, the convenors of the meeting that they held in Mogoditshane and their sympathisers must have handed over their cards to the party before the end of the day today (yesterday), failing which we will consider them to be members of the party and therefore subject to its processes.

We have told to them to bring the cards to the party office or to the structures in the areas where they are resident,' said BDP spokesperson Dr Comma Serema. It would be interesting to see what action the BDP is likely to take against members who have already declared publicly that they are not members of the party anymore.

'The BDP is a voluntary organisation whose membership is by freewill. Joining the party, like any club is an exercise of  a person's freedom of association. I doubt if there is a constitutional provision that empowers the party to take action against people who have declared that they are no longer members, unless those people are carrying certain properties of value - in which case they can be charged with a criminal offence.

Otherwise any decision taken against them will be of no effect. For you to submit to an organisation's disciplinary process, you must be a member and willing to go through the process, and I doubt if the faction members will be interested in that,' said Gaborone lawyer Tebogo Sebego.

Another lawyer, Gabriel Kanjabanga concurred: 'If they say they're not BDP members, there is no way they can take them through the party's disciplinary process.

As for taking back cards, it makes no difference. In fact most people don't feel obliged to send back their membership cards when they quit a voluntary organisation,' he said. Efforts to get the opinion of BDP lawyer Parks Tafa proved futile as he said he was in a meeting.