16 Jul 2013

Botswana National Front (BNF) leader, Mr Duma Boko says his party would continue to restore and maintain its stability.

Addressing the party’s 16th national congress on July 14 in Ghanzi, Mr Boko said the party would not tolerate insults and attacks made by some party members in the media as well as social networks. He stated that some individuals within the party had turned themselves into enemies.

Again, he opined that the attacks had intensified and described insults against the party and its leadership as "ringing irritatingly like the shrill noises of a thousand mosquitoes."

He said such disloyal attacks ignored party structures that could help and assist the party as well as the leadership. Mr Boko also noted that there were existing avenues open within the party structures where party members should forward any issues or their grievances.

“They deliberately shun these structures in order to engage in malicious and unprincipled attacks against leadership,” he said. As such, he advised party members that the BNF was an organisation founded on the principle of democratic centralism, among other things.

“The party convenes congresses and conferences to take decisions and elect its leadership in accordance with its constitution and once elected, the leadership speaks for the party,” he said.

He also cautioned members that those who had deliberately failed or refused to avail themselves of the appropriate channels of airing grievances and discussing issues with the party deserved the most serious sanction. Mr Boko also said those who undermined the party and insulted the leadership displayed total disrespect.

Therefore, he noted that they must be removed from the party, charging that their ‘boisterous denunciation can be better dealt with if they are carried out from outside the party; then the party can engage with these insults in the same platform in which they are hurled.’ ENDS