Basotho National Party Members of Parliament should desist from influencing gullible members of the party into engaging in unlawful acts, Speaker of the National Assembly, Miss Ntlhoi Motsamai, has warned. 

Addressing the Lower House on October 12, following an incident earlier in the week when BNP supporters petitioned her office in what they said was her lack of cooperation with the Party’s chief whip, the Speaker said the parliamentary BNP has over the past three years, consistently displayed a contemptuous attitude towards her. 

On October 10 BNP supporters marched to Parliament petitioning the Speaker for her alleged lack of co-operation with the party's whip in parliament in the choosing of delegates to conferences, both inside and outside the country. The petitioners thronged the entrance to Parliament demanding an immediate reply.

The supporters were against the Speaker’s of BNP MP Mr. Bereng Sekhonyana to a regional seminar on Electoral Systems without consulting the party’s whip. The Speaker defended this by explaining that Sekhonyana's proven track record during his tenure as a leader of the Interim Political Authority and one of the architects of the current mixed member proportional parliament stood him in good stead.

Miss Motsamai recalled that soon after MPs had taken oath of office at the start of this sixth parliament, the party attempted to arm-twist her into pushing for its leader, Major-General Metsing Lekhanya to be nominated to the Council of State.

Mr. Lekhanya was not in parliament during the Speaker's address.

12 October 2005