DA discovers cost of playing along with ANC, in NA

25 May 2016 

Congress of the People was right to exit parliament for now in order to highlight the regnant and unconstitutional tendencies of the ANC. The DA is now discovering, to its cost, that playing along with the DA in spite of the judgment of the ConCourt is inimical and detrimental to constitutional democracy. The ANC will, whichever way it can, whittle away all of the constitutional obligations to hold the executive accountable and make an even greater mockery of the role of parliament as an independent arm of government. The ANC is so bent on subverting the Constitution that it will listen to no one.

It has taken the DA rather long to discover that the ruling party is hell bent on putting forward “proposal after proposal to diminish Parliament’s executive oversight capacity‚ and (to) oppress the opposition”. By walking out of the National Assembly Rules Committee on Tuesday, the DA has vindicated COPE’s position. It should not seek to go back into the National Assembly any time soon.

Anyone who had viewed NA question day in the period when Nelson Mandela was president would have been staggered to see how the public gallery was packed to capacity on every question day. The public witnessed the new democratic parliament flexing its muscles and holding a readily willing president and a readily willing cabinet to account to the elected representatives of the people. Those were glorious days indeed. Democracy was visible and democracy was at work in support of the people. There was nothing to hide and nothing for the executive to fear. Each arm of government fed of the other and our democratic institutions were then at their strongest. How we are continuing to fall since those heady days!

The current practice of Oral Questions with notice is bringing bread that is two weeks stale to the table. It is appetizing to no one. To make question time even more drab, the ANC has been hogging the limited opportunities to question the executive with sweetheart questions like old jam on old bread.

The ANC wants to render parliament inconsequential and meaningless. Like the ruling party in Turkey, the ANC in South Africa would like the executive to have more power and be less accountable to the nation.

Issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE Spokesperson, 25 May 2016