BG reporter

Scores of Ramotswa residents thronged Emmanuel Centre hall in Ramotswa Wednesday to hear area MP Odirile Motlhale explain reasons for his defection from Botswana Democratic Party to its splinter, Botswana Movement for Democracy (BMD).
Speakers at the press conference said the recent intervention by the BDP’s council of elders to help restore parity had come a little too late. Motlhale said he had been a member of the A-Team faction until 2004 when he realised that factions were bad for the party. “My problems in the party began at that time when I pulled out of factionalism and became a neutral.
The leadership of the party never accepted my stance and they have never trusted me since. But I have done everything I could to help the party rise above factions, to no avail,” he said.
Motlhale asserted that he joined the BMD purely out of principle and conviction after introspection. “You don’t spend 18 years of activism in a party and then wake up one day to say you are leaving. There ought to be good reasons for me to do that. The party I joined as a student at that time is no longer the same.
The leadership has created a situation that made us go to the Kanye congress as if we were two different parties. And the blatant bias of the leadership towards one faction pained me. I never tired in my attempts to correct our situation, but our elders showed no desire to remedy the problem. I then took a decision to quit.”
A former BDP councilor, Shoko Molefe, told the gathering that a plot had been hatched by some BDP activists working for the party leadership to ensure Motlhale does not represent the party in the next general elections. In fact, he said, Motlhale was never really accepted and embraced by the party leadership since ousting their preferred former MP Lesego Motsumi. He added that the BMD did not recruit Motlhale, saying the MP rather joined the party on his own volition after realising that the ruling party’s problems were beyond redemption.
Other speakers at the press conference included members of parliament Wynter Mmolotsi, Botsalo Ntuane and Gilbert Mangole. The three poured scorn on suggestions that they were bitter and power- hungry politicians who protested for not getting cabinet posts. Mangole said that rather than speculate on whether the resigned BDP members were power-hungry or not, it would be better to engage cabinet ministers and find out why they seemed not concerned about the problems bedeviling the party.
Ntuane told the gathering that life in Botswana has never been the same since April 1, 2008. He said never in the history of the country have people been subjected to the prevailing fear that now makes people edgy when they use their cellular phones. Added to that, he said, civil servants are no longer free and work under uncertain circumstances where at any time they could be chased like dogs. “In every country, a time eventually arrives for political change, and that time in Botswana is now.
Be proud to be alive and to see this historical change; be glad to be a part of history,” he said.  Botswana Congress Party’s vice president, Lepetu Setshwaelo, who attended as a guest, urged the constituents to rally their support for Motlhale and the BMD. “I am so excited to witness the writing of history by the BMD. Seeing all of you here makes me realize that you want change in this country. Those who are not here are missing a lot,” he said. Two BDP councilors Tekena Seitshiro of Tlokweng Central and Boiki Gaseitsewe of Ramotswa also defected with Motlhale.