BDP members question PEEC
Tsaone Basimanebotlhe | Friday February 6, 2015 16:50
PEEC’s primary role is to educate members about party policies, recruit people to the party, conduct and give guidance during party and national elections. The committee is also tasked with coordinating national and regional campaigns. Concerned BDP members have now taken their worries about the committee to social media.
“We are supposed to work hand in hand with strategic committees but we have since failed to do so. The biggest problem is that our chairman Mephato Reatile is not calling meetings and we have long advised him to do so. At first PEEC was touring constituencies building party structures and educating people about voting and now it is history,” a member told Mmegi.
He said BDP performed badly in the general elections because PEEC was not functional. He said it failed to advise the party about societal perceptions of the party.
“Together with the strategic team, PEEC should come up with strategies that the party needs to use in the general elections. That is not happening under Reatile’s leadership,” he said.
A different source, who is a member of the PEEC said the sub-committee had become so dysfunctional it even failed to provide a report of the last general election to the central committee. “The BDP performed so dismally because the PEEC failed to organise regions to help with party campaigns. Where in the past there was commitment from the party, there was none this time. It is PEEC’s role to make the party commit itself,” he said.
He stated that the PEEC had its own budget, but failed to account to the central committee about what they had done when it met on Monday. A PEEC member Ford Moiteela recently expressed his disappointment with his party and PEEC. “…the party used to show commitment by giving people who campaigned resources [and] food, fuel to… help in the campaigns. “But this time things were different … I fuelled my own car to campaign at Ngware and Goodhope despite the fact that I am a PEEC member,” Moiteela said.
PEEC chairperson Mephato Reatile said the BDP had structures in place to deal with grievances, and the media is not one of them. “Whoever feels aggrieved by PEEC should follow party procedures to register his complaint. We sent the vice chairperson from our committee to brief the central committee on by-elections and the secretary general knew where I was. I had to attend the issue of a police officer who was tragically shot by robbers while on duty because this is the area I am responsible for as a council chairman,” he said.