- Constituency meeting fails as BDP members attend Khama’s meeting
- PEEC writes a damning report to Balopi about Khama’s infiltration
TEFO PHEAGE
The Botswana Democratic Party (BDP)’s Political Education and Elections Committee (PEEC) has written a damning report to the central committee fingering former president Ian Khama for the collapse and disruption of their meeting with party members on political education and elections issues and voters’ roll verification.
The meeting was scheduled for the past Saturday, a date which Khama and member of parliament for Francistown East Constituency Buti Billy ran a parallel meeting with constituents to donate blankets and soup.
The constituents, councilors and candidates flocked to Khama’s meeting.
According to the leaked report delivered to the party Secretary General, Mpho Balopi by PEEC deputy chair Alec Seametso, Khama and Billy are to blame for convening a parallel occasion while the party was scheduled to hold a very important meeting with constituents.
Seametso did not want to field questions from this publication and referred questions to BDP Secretary General Mpho Balopi. “I have given the Secretary General the report on what transpired in Francistown and all questions must be directed to him,” he said.
Balopi declined to comment, saying they are yet to make a decision on the report and added that he has advised the PEEC to clarify some issues. “I cannot make comments yet as we haven’t yet sat down to analyze the report,” added.
However one of the accused, Billy who admitted to having seen the report said he is shocked that the PEEC is making unfounded and irrational allegations about them. “I saw the report in passing. We did not call anybody to our meeting and the PEEC cannot make a wild allegation to the effect that if the people were not at their meeting they were at our meeting. They should produce proof of their allegations,” he charged.
Billy further said they should take Khama out of the matter because he was the one who invited the former president to officiate at the event. “It was not the first time I invited Khama. He has been in my constituency about four times since I have been a member of parliament. So it was basically a continuation of that,” he said.
It is not yet clear whether the party will convene another session as councilors and candidates were absent at the scheduled highly level gathering meant to discuss the voter’s roll and resolve pending election issues.