Public Protector Ad Hoc Committee rushes to shortlisting without proper consideration of public comment
13 July 2016
In today’s Ad Hoc Committee established to appoint the new Public Protector; the ANC in the committee attempted to bulldoze the shortlisting of aspirant Public Protector candidates despite there being almost no consideration of the public comments.
At the outset of this process the Chairperson of the Committee, Dr Makhosi Khoza, herself asserted that “all committees of parliament are public. These processes must be transparent". We implore the Chairperson not to renege on her own commitment in this regard and to give effect to presiding over a process that is free from undue political considerations.
In the interim the DA vehemently opposed the move to rush this process and demanded, in committee, that time be allocated to consider all the public comment so that the shortlisting process was thorough and a product that reflected all submissions made to the filling of the critical corruption-busting position.
In the end the ANC in the committee only allowed for a mere 35 minutes to traverse a portion of 69 documents which cannot be considered adequate time for the committee to properly apply its mind in order to make a fully informed determination of a shortlist for Public Protector.
The DA reiterates its call for this appointment process to be carried out in an impartial and transparent manner. The Office of the Public Protector should stand as a watch-dog against government corruption, impropriety and maladministration.
To replace the fearless Adv Madonsela with a lapdog would be undermining our hard-won constitutional imperatives.
The DA, alongside political parties who believe in the Rule of Law and stopping corruption, will work tirelessly during this process to appoint the new Public Protector, to ensure that the right woman or man is appointed to serve the interests of the people instead of the narrow interests of a political cabal set on advancing their own self-interested agenda.
Issued by Glynnis Breytenbach, DA Shadow Minister of Justice, 13 July 2016
