Moroke Sekoboto
THE Socialist Revolutionaries (SR) party will tomorrow open its two-day inaugural conference to elect a new national executive committee (NEC) at the Methodist High School in Maseru.
SR leader Teboho Mojapela will officially open the conference.
SR was formed as a splinter party from the former ruling All Basotho Convention (ABC) in November 2017, after Adv Mojapela fell out with former Prime Minister Thomas Thabane and his wife Maesiah.
The party had since then been run by an interim NEC.
Adv Mojapela had been one of the key funders of the ABC when it won the 2017 elections to return Mr Thabane to power for his second stint as prime minister. However, he felt unrewarded for his efforts after he was snubbed for key roles in the new Thabane coalition.
The SR did fairly well in winning Mr Mojapela’s Motete constituency in Butha-Buthe and gaining an extra proportional representation seat in its inaugural contest of the 2022 general elections. The SR did better than the ABC which essentially collapsed after failing to win a single constituency seat.
The SR’s elective conference had originally been scheduled for February 2023. It was postponed to this month to enable the party to repeal a clause in its constitution that banned members less than 36 months in the party from contesting elections into the NEC.
The amendment means that notorious ‘party-hoppers’ who are also Adv Mojapela’s allies, like Tlohelang Aumane and Tjoetsane Seoka can contest for positions into the SR’s pinnacle structure.
Mr Aumane and Mr Seoka are notorious for hopping from one party to another in search of personal political and economic glory.
The two who were members of the Lesotho Congress for Democracy (LCD), then followed former Prime Minister Pakalitha Mosisili and his former right-hand man Monyane Moleleki to the now main opposition Democratic Congress (DC) when it was formed in 2012. They dumped he DC to join Mr Moleleki’s Alliance of Democrats (AD) when the latter fell out with Mr Mosisili in 2016, before dumping the AD to join the SR. Mr Aumane had a short stint as a Revolution for Prosperity member before defecting to the SR.
Messrs Aumane and Seoka are vying for deputy leader and secretary general positions respectively. They would not have been eligible to contest if the constitution had not been amended to accommodate them.
The party released a statement this week of names of candidates who it said had been nominated by constituencies for various positions.
