BMD dares Khama to call for general elections

EPHRAIM KEORENG
Staff Writer | Wednesday May 5, 2010 00:00

 

Responding to a challenge by Khama who speaking at a rally in Francistown over the weekend, that all the BDP members who defect to the new BMD, whilst occupying MPs and councilor seats should resign from their (parliamentary and council seats) positions, BMD spokesperson Sidney Pilane responded in kind;

'We throw the challenge back to the President. If he is as confident as he makes out, we dare him to resign from the presidency, dissolve Parliament and call for elections now! Although yet unprepared, we are supremely confident that the country is so anxious to get rid of him and his military regime the BDP would lose the elections overwhelmingly. It is because he is acutely aware of this that he dares not take up this challenge.

Accordingly, the BMD Members of Parliament and Councilors decline his invitation; they do not answer to him. The BMD has its own agenda, and we will not allow the President to dictate his agenda to us,' said Pilane.

Some of the BDP MPs who are said to be members of the BMD include Botsalo Ntuane, Gilbert Mangole and Wynter Mmolotsi. The BMD is made up of the Barata-Phathi faction of the BDP, which broke away to form the new party following its persistent face-offs with the other BDP faction, the A-Team and Khama.

Pilane said the BMD MPs and councilors won the seats as individuals by popular will, not of the A-Team, but of Batswana who were satisfied that the now BMD Parliamentary and Council candidates were, as individuals, capable of representing, not the interests of the A-Team, but of the country. He pointed out that the BMD MPs and Councilors succeeded in the elections substantially because they employed their own personal resources, their energies and time in the campaigns.

'They, and not the BDP, earned the seats. The seats are held by them as individuals, and not by the BDP, and they will not relinquish them. They won them by popular vote, which is much more than the President can claim because he cannot point to a single Motswana as having elected him; he owes his position of President to these MPs to whom he is beholden,' he said.

Pilane said many members of Barata-phathi the country over have left the BDP, adding that he was curious as to why Khama did not explain at the Francistown rally, 'that after 48 years of BDP existence and three Presidents, his singular achievement has been the bitter split of the BDP and its guaranteed loss of the next general elections?  We wish to assure the BMD Members of Parliament and Councillors, in their large numbers, that they need fear nothing, for the law is on their side.

Their constituents should be secure in the knowledge that their representatives will continue to justify the trust and confidence which the electorate has reposed in them. We promise the nation that we will, through the democratic process, deliver them from the evil that this government has become,' he said.      

BDP spokesman Dr Comma Serema has rubbished Pilane's statements that MPs and councilors who defect to BMD do not owe the BDP their seats, saying the former BDP member does not understand how democracy works.

'Those people were elected through the BDP. Their win emanated from the BDP goodwill. On the president resigning I think that is uncalled for. He has not defected from the BDP and it should also be noted that he was elected at the high court during the presidential elections held in Lobatse. So he is not stealing anyone's vote, as he is not resigning,' he said.