PARTIES MEET
All Party Conference slated for March
The All Party Conference will be held next week Friday on March 1, Minister of State President, Kabo Morwaeng has announced. Morwaeng said this will be the first of a couple of All Party Conferences that will be held this year, adding that the intention of the conference is for political parties to discuss matters of importance relating to the country’s socio-economic and political atmosphere. When asked on the occasion of him registering to vote in Moshupa last month, President Mokgweetsi Masisi promised to ensure the conference would be held after there had been concerns about its lengthy shelving. Opposition party leaders had in different forums lamented the conference’s no show, with the calls for it heightening during the period of the court case that pitted the Independent Electoral Commission against the
Umbrella for Democratic Change. At that media briefing in Moshupa, the president acknowledged his indifference to the calls, saying he was never going to be pressurised into calling the conference while there was an ongoing tussle on the country’s electoral process.
In November last year, the Botswana Congress Party President Dumelang Saleshando wrote a letter to President Masisi, among which he called on him to convene the meeting as a matter of urgency, to address several issues around the country’s democracy, with the matter of elections top of the agenda.
“It would have been wrong to call a meeting to discuss a matter that was the subject of an ongoing court case.
In my view, calling on me to call a meeting to address the issue was an attempt to lead me into temptation to break the law. Now that the path has been cleared with the final judgement of the court, I can
assure everyone that the conference will be held,” Masisi said at the time, adding that as the Minister of State President, Morwaeng was the one responsible for calling the conference.
It is against this background that Morwaeng will be convening the meeting next week, an undertaking he also promised in January on the backdrop of Masisi’s promise. The All Party Conference began as an annual gathering of all political parties to discuss matters of national importance. For over a decade the conference was not held, the first in a long time only coming a few months after Masisi became President. It is for this reason that Saleshando was not convinced with Masisi’s reasoning on not convening the conference on the excuse of the issues he raised being sub judice. Saleshando insisted that the president had convened the meeting before, and did not talk about him not being responsible for convening it.