12 Aug 2018

Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) will hold primary elections on August 25.

This follows elections postponement, which the party had stated was necessitated by the discovery of a compromise to the integrity of the voter’s roll of the BDP in the form of a hacking of the roll specific to the 38 BDP held constituencies which were the subject of the upcoming primary elections.

The BDP secretary general Mr Mpho Balopi informed a press conference after the BDP meeting held in Palapye over the weekend that the party decided to hold primary elections dubbed bulela ditswe on August 25.

Mr Balopi said the party managed to identify the problem that led to the postponement of primary elections and had come up with corrective measures to ensure that the party held credible elections.

The BDP, he said resolved the problem by inviting all the candidates who would be contesting for elections as well as branch members of the 38 BDP held constituencies to this meeting to map the way forward.

He informed the media that the voters roll would be availed to constituencies for verification on August 15 with the expectation to have them submitted to the BDP electoral board by August 17.

He said from there the electoral board would audit all the books from the said constituencies to cross check if they corresponded with  the voters roll.

He also noted that all polling stations would be unique in that the voter’s rolls would differ per polling station so that nobody voted twice.

He said the voters roll for each polling station would contain names and the number of people who were expected to vote at that particular polling station, adding that prior to the elections BDP branches were given the responsibility to identify their respective polling stations and decide which cells would be voting where.

For the first time, he said the party had decided to use a permanent ink as such members would be expected to dip their fingers in the ink as a sign that they had casted their vote.

In addition, he informed the media that due to delay in processing membership cards, the electoral board and the Central committee had resolved members who did not have membership cards would be allowed to use national identity cards because the BDP membership card number correspondsedto the national identity card number.

 “We did this deliberately because Omang is a consistent and constant identity for everyone and cannot be duplicated. We did this because our membership is permanent and all those in possession of the current BDP membership cards are life members of BDP,” he said.

He said the use of omang would address concerns that some party members may deny others the right to vote by not issuing them with membership cards. ENDS