LTA in court again, as fiasco continues

NTHAKO MAJORO

MASERU – The debacle unsettling the administration of the taekwondo sport in the country continues, with the latest being a court order nullifying last Saturday’s elective conference – a court case is set for next Tuesday. The fresh legal challenge comes following dissatisfaction court from the Lesotho Sport and Recreation Commission (LSRC) and the Lesotho National Olympic Committee (LNOC)’s Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) over the voters’ roll used for the election of a new executive committee. The court order was granted in favour of Lithabaneng Taekwondo Club, following the decision by the Lesotho Taekwondo Association (LTA) executive committee to remove the club from the initial list of clubs to participate in the elections.

According to sources within the sport’s administration, Lithabaneng Taekwondo Club was removed from the list after the voters’ roll was rearranged following the first court order granted in November last year and another court case by some of member clubs over the eligibility of other clubs regarding the very same elective conference. LTA’s outgoing Public Relations Officer, Sek’hok’he Molikoe, confirmed the developments.

Molikoe further confirmed that the LTA administration had initially included Lithabaneng Taekwondo Club and others in the list of those who were eligible to participate in the elections. “They were part of the clubs who were eligible to participate in the elections from the beginning but were pushed out by the applicants and they (Lithabaneng Taekwondo Club) did not challenge that until today,” said Molikoe in an interview with Public Eye on Monday.

“Now when it’s elections day they throw a bombshell, which is not fair because they have wasted our energy and time after all was prepared and people spending in order to attend the conference,” he said.

Molikoe further said: “We wanted nothing but to hold a successful elective conference at last.”  This paper has, however, been reliably informed that the IEC was already going to cancel the taekwondo elective conference over unsatisfactory voters’ roll.

But Molikoe on the other hand shifted the blame on the IEC itself. He said amongst other things, the IEC failed to even announce the names of the candidates despite his organisation submit the names on time. “We gave them information regarding our nomination forms, the latest being on Thursday of a week before the elections day but did not announce them.” Molikoe said this was despite the fact that IEC told them before that the nomination list must be announced on time.

But, he said, instead the IEC began to complain about the unsatisfactory of the voters roll after seven days. “They began to complain about the unsatisfactory of the voters’ roll after we confronted them concerning the announcement of the candidates, after seven days.”

Molikoe further admitted that all was not well as regard to the voters’ roll, but once again shifted the blame on their (LTA) Secretary General Teboho Masimong. “That’s the corruption by the Secretary General whom we had suspended before but had to be reinstated upon realisation that we did not follow the procedure when suspending him. So he is back and continues to work against the committee.”

Molikoe said instead of working with the committee, Masimong seemed to be working with other taekwondo members who were against the LTA administration. The term of the office of the current LTA administration expired in March last year. Molikoe at the time said they could not hold the elective conference because of the first ever COVID-19 national lockdown in 2019.