DA reports Speaker and ANC MPs who voted to protect Zuma to Ethics Committee
7 April 2016
The DA has today returned to the scene of the crime, where the ANC Caucus and Speaker of Parliament aided and abetted the President contravene the Constitution, to launch a formal complaint with the Registrar of the Joint Committee on Ethics and Members' Interests for their deplorable role in Parliaments processing of the Public Protector's report on Nkandla.
Yesterday the ANC Chief Whip, Jackson Mthembu, called a press conference to place the blame for the National Assembly’s poor processing of the Public Protector’s report on the millions of rands spent on the President’s private residence on Parliament’s legal advisors and a cabinet and caucus-wide 'misunderstanding.
It is however important to remember that Parliament’s legal advisors are not the ones seated in the NA, and last August used their majority to pass a resolution that purported effectively to nullify the findings made and the remedial action taken, by the Public Protector and replacing it with its own findings and ‘remedial action’. The ANC are, and we challenge the Chief Whip to make those legal opinions public.
That resolution has now been ruled by the Constitutional Court to be invalid and has been set aside. Further, the Constitutional Court found that National Assembly flouted its obligations in terms of sections 42(3) and 55(2) of the Constitution. Indeed the Court found that as a result, this resolution was inconsistent with the Constitution and unlawful.