The intention, really was to write a diary about my recent travels in Europe. But the issue of EVMs has kept nagging me; cropping on my mind every other minute.
It has the feeling about it of ghosts that one cannot exorcise, frequently coming to haunt a hapless victim over and over again.
The more we discuss the issue of EVMs the more it becomes apparent the extent to which people who are in the shadows are using unaccountable power to make decisions that should otherwise be made by us the voter.
The law that brought us here is a glaring example of the extent to which government and indeed its decission making processes have both been privatised.
Almost everybody without exception is against EVMs. Yet the consultant employed to sell this defective invention still feels driven to labour on.
That he is effectively beating dead horse does mot seem to matter tom him.
For a man of his stature, becoming a snake oil salesman should be a great concern to Gabriel Seeletso. Yet he remains the least bothered.
By closing his ears to popular public disapproval of his project Seeletso is no longer a messenger. He is the message and has thus rendered himself a legitimate target whose motives have to be questioned and even impugned.
There is no longer any doubt, if ever there was any, that EVMs can be hacked and be manipulated.
At question is no longer the benefits to be gained from using EVMS but rather the integrity of elections.
Seeletso’s defensive and often abrasive attitude, especially towards the media makes him sound like a man on a mission to shield his brainchild from public scrutiny.
His pious indifference to public concerns has the markings of religious crusader.
In his quest to sell EVMs, Seeletso has often behaved like he was on some showbiz blitz.
He has effectively been telling all of us that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for us. And also that in a nation of over two million he’s the only one who can be correct when it comes to his ever shifting explanations on his eccentric dventure.
What is in it for him, we have to keep asking ourselves.
Is he just a detached consultant? Or there is something more that we don’t know?
These are not your average boilerplate questions that he can easily brash aside in the manner he recently did at a fiasco show that he organised.
These are questions that go to the root of our democracy and governance.
A non-politician may be Seeletso can afford to disregard emphatic public views on a matter so crucial to our democracy.
But even then the people for who Seeletso works need to be reminded that in a democracy so many people as those emphatically against EVMs can never be all wrong.
Whatever Seeletso’s motivations, baser elements are at play against our democracy when it comes to EVMs. President Ian Khama has made it clear that this is not a law originated by his government.
The ruling party secretary general, Botsalo Ntuane has said his party is not happy with the same law.
The opposition, in its various formations has sought legal recourse on the matter.
The ruling party parliamentary caucus that passed the law has said they feel cheated and duped into passing it.
The UDC deputy leader is on record saying the Independent Electoral Commission does not have capacity to administer EVMs in a General Election.
Ndaba Gaolathe’s view is that only the DIS has capacity to do that.
If that is true then it means this EVMs law is DIS law. And except for Seeletso hardly anyone else’s.
