The recent election of the new council of the Law Society of Botswana (LSB) is stained by a litany of complaints by aggrieved lawyers who contested. There are claims that the LSB has released partial results, bent regulations and therefore the results should be nullified. Added to this, there are complaints that the elections were not conducted by an independent body but by the majority of LSB staff members with a little help from a few individuals from the teaching profession.
Further, there are allegations that counting was done by LSB staffers while those who contested went for lunch with the results released about four hours later.
“Basic rules of fairness were violated to an extensive scale,” lawyers Joram Matomela and Mooketsi Segaise, who contested the elections, told the Telegraph on Monday. The duo is demanding reasons why the results of some of the candidates, including themselves, were withheld and not announced at the Annual General meeting by the LSB.
“The Law Society has bent rules by amending regulations. In terms of the Legal Practitioners Act, a quorum is made up of 25 percent but the LSB has since amended that to 10 percent. For the regulations to have a force of law they must be gazetted and this has not been the case,” they argue.
The two have since written to the Law Society, demanding that the full results be released.
“In short, we are concerned that there had been a partial announcement of the results up to date and we do not know when the full results will be released to the public and members of the society. Effectively, there had not been announcement of results of the elections,” wrote the two in a letter to the LSB, demanding the release of full results.
The lawyers say they had expectation that the executive secretary would attend to previous concerns raised by those who contested but he appeared to have “trivialized issues”.
They argue that the former chairperson manipulated the election since he had a vested interest.
They further claim that no observers were allowed and that prior to the election, the former chairperson, Tebogo Sebego, sent notice to members in which he was trying to explain the election rules, among them who can vote and who cannot.
Sebego was the returning officer and also running against the aggrieved lawyers. Sebego told the Telegraph that the announced results in Francistown was a summary of the elections.
“The summarised version was a synopsis from a detailed results,” Sebego told the Telegraph in his capacity as the former chairperson and member of the council. He said anyone who wishes to study the full results may do so at the LSB.
Membership to the LSB has also given rise to divisions between lawyers in private practice and those who work for the government. The LSB expects lawyers from government to issue proof of membership to the profession before they can participate in voting.
But the government lawyers argue that Section 56 of the Legal Practitioners Act determines who is a member of the society, and it is not subject to any regulations.
As such, they argue registration or failure to do so with the society, contrary to the LSB, cannot disempower or divest members of their right to participate at the annual general meeting. To this, Sebego says lawyers in private practice pay annual subscriptions to the LSB while government lawyers do not. Yvonne Chilume is the new chairperson assisted by Binta Tobedza. Both could not be reached for comment by press time.
