Africa-Press – Lesotho. THE Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD) secretary general, Teboho Sekata, has demanded that the party should reverse its decision to appoint a key party member to the Senate.
He wants party leader, Mothetjoa Metsing, to appoint him instead. Sekata is not happy that Metsing appointed Sehloho Monatsi a Senator. Monatsi paid the M100 000 surety for Metsing when he was facing jail earlier this year.
Party members who are backing the Sekata faction in the dispute have accused Metsing over social media of corruptly awarding the seat to Monatsi as a way of thanking him for rescuing him when he was in legal troubles.
The LCD constitution gives the party leader the power to select members of the Senate. Metsing is said to have recommended Monatsi to Prime Minister Sam Matekane for appointment to the Senate after the LCD pledged to vote with the government in parliament.
Sekata is however adamant that he should have been the one appointed to the Senate. Through his lawyers, Ketsi Chambers, Sekata argues that the seat was wrongfully and illegally allocated to Monatsi.
He wants the seat allocated to him within seven days or else he will seek legal redress. Ketsi Chambers asked the LCD NEC to review the deployment of Monatsi.
The lawyers have demanded a response within the next seven working days. “His nomination has been done in contravention of the provision of the constitution of LCD,” the legal team argued in a letter sent to the party last week.
The lawyers said they have been reliably informed that Monatsi was wrongfully nominated to the position by the working committee which did not have powers to do so.
For Monatsi to have been correctly nominated to such a position, Sekata argued that this should have been through the party’s national executive committee.
But this was not followed, he said. Further, the legal team said it has been informed that even in terms of hierarchy Monatsi did not stand a chance to be a member of the Senate. The letter said it is Sekata who “stands a chance to occupy such a position”.
On the basis of the aforementioned, the letter reads: it is unfair on the part of Sekata that Monatsi jumped the queue and occupied the position which is supposed to be rightly occupied by Sekata in terms of the party’s hierarchy.
Monatsi is a member of the NEC without a specific portfolio while Sekata is the secretary general. “Our client has requested from you that the committee of LCD should urgently revisit the said nomination of Monatsi within seven days,” the letter partly reads.
The LCD spokesman, Apesi Ratšele, said they are working on Sekata’s complaints and have since asked his lawyers to “provide clauses of laws” that support his complaint.
He said Sekata’s lawyers have promised to get back to them and they will respond thereafter. Monatsi told thepost that those who accuse him of wrongfully being a senator “are totally lost and don’t know what they are talking about”.
“I was not part of the working committee that recommended to the national executive committee that I should be a Senator,” Monatsi said.
“I was not part of the meeting of the national executive committee, although I’m a member, that resolved to recommend me for the seat,” he said.
“The LCD constitution at 147 (f) gives the leader the prerogative to choose senators.
Monatsi said it is true that he paid M100 000 for Metsing so that he could not be jailed when the court ordered that he should pay M50 000 bail and M100 000 surety. Other MPs, he said, contributed M50 000 for the bail.
“At the time when I paid that amount how could I have known that there would be a chance for the LCD to send someone to the senate?” he said, adding that the accusation is without substance.
Monatsi said he paid the amount because he saw the requirement as an MP for the party and “I felt that it was my responsibility to protect the leader and the image of the party”.
“How would the people, including you, look at us if we had allowed our leader to be jailed?”
“I had that amount of money and I decided to do what was right.
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