Scorned Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) parliamentary candidate for Tlokweng constituency, Elijah Katse’s attorney Kabelo Nkwe has moved to file an urgent application to stop Minister Olebile Gaborone from being launched as party parliamentary candidate for the constituency. Katse is taking legal action against the BDP after the party central committee recalled him as parliamentary candidate for Tlokweng. The central committee replaced Katse with Assistant Minister of local Government and rural Development, Olebile Gaborone.
Nkwe told the court that, “we have decided to move this matter on urgent basis. We will be filing the certificate of urgency today (Friday) with our reasons. The respondent attorney will be served with the certificate of urgency and other court papers and we will arrange with the court for the date suitable,” he said. Dineo Makati-Mpho of Collins and Newman law firm, representing Gaborone told the court that she was supposed to meet with Nkwe on Monday for case management conference (CMC) but they were unable to meet.
“We agreed to meet on Thursday but still we were unable to meet because of constraints,” she said. Delivering the ruling, High Court Judge Terrence Rannowane ordered that the case be removed from the roll. “My ruling is that the case be removed from the court roll until both parties had filed court papers.
This is also to allow the applicants to file their certificate of urgency,” he said. Speaking to the Sunday Standard on the sideline Nkwe said the reasoning to stop Gaborone launch scheduled for next weekend will form part of their arguments. “We cannot allow Gaborone’s launch to go on while he still has a case that concern his candidature before the courts. It is very crucial and it will be injustice if the launch continues while the case is not yet finalised. We are hopeful that by next week we would have dealt with the matter,” he said. Katse’s campaign manager Tidimalo Mothose told Sunday Standard that they are hopeful that the court will deal with the matter and court will determine whether Assistant Minister’s launch continues or not.
Katse was accused of tempering with the voters roll. He has since challenged the BDP central committee to produce proof as to how he could have tempered with the voters roll in the custody of the party’s secretariat. Katse did not take the matter lightly claiming that allegations levelled against him have the potential to tarnish his image.
