(MENAFN- The Post) MASERU – DEFENCE Principal Secretary 'Mamonyane Bohloko last weekend quit the All Basotho Convention (ABC) and joined the Democratic Congress (DC) party less than a week before the key election.
Bohloko received a“hero's welcome” at a DC rally held last Sunday amid cheers from the party's women's league members in Maseru.
In an interview with thepost, Bohloko said she was not comfortable discussing her defection with the media. She said it is not the media's business that she had defected.
“This is not the right time to discuss my defection because a lot of things can happen,” Bohloko said.
“This is a critical time to talk about such politics as the general election are approaching.”
Bohloko said she will give out a detailed interview to the media when she is ready after the election.
Contacted for comment yesterday, the ABC's spokesman, Montoeli Masoetsa, downplayed Bohloko's defection saying she“was not adding any value to the party”.
“She was not a strong member, just that we gave her the principal secretary's job,” Masoetsa said.
He said Bohloko's absence would“not be felt in the ABC as she was not bringing anything to the table”.
He said they knew about Bohloko's looming defection in July even before she could make it public.
“She left months ago and she did not have any significance in the All Basotho Convention.”
Bohloko, who is not much known in political circles, made headlines in 2018 when the parliament's Public Affairs Committee (PAC) grilled her over staffing Lesotho's embassies with unqualified accountants.
It was, at the time, believed that she hired had ABC members based on their political affiliation instead of merit. Bohloko was at that time the principal secretary for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The PAC grilled Bohloko for hiring unqualified people in Lesotho's missions abroad as accountants.
The committee's worry was that these unqualified accountants were so incompetent that they could not stop simple acts of corruption and fraud.
“There is a bottomless hole in the Foreign Affairs Ministry in which public funds are thrown,” Selibe Mochoboroane, the then PAC chairman, said.
Bohloko told Mochoboroane's committee that they were“told to hire people on the basis of political affiliations instead of their professional qualifications”.
Masquerading as an accountant is a criminal offence punishable by a prison term in Lesotho.
Nkheli Liphoto