REACTION ON OZINSKY'S ALLEGATIONS

In reaction to a statement released yesterday, 1 June 2011, by Mr. Max Ozinsky: Mr. Ozinsky made serious allegations of illegal interference by the Western Cape Provincial Parliament Speaker, in the affairs of SCOPA. He also alleges that the Speaker engaged a consultant to ‘rewrite' the so-called SCOPA resolutions ‘behind the back of the committee'.

In particular, it is alleged that the so-called consultant "sanitised" the section of resolutions dealing with the administration of the Provincial Parliament. The facts are the following:

The so-called consultant in question is employed by the Provincial Parliament on a fixed term contract to, inter alia, edit all house papers. This includes the committee reports. The editing is confined to matters of grammar and style.

When it came to the attention of the Acting Secretary of the Western Cape Provincial Parliament that SCOPA resolutions were still outstanding, he immediately gave the instruction that the draft resolution be finalised as a matter of urgency.

He further instructed the Head of the Committee Section, the senior committee co-ordinator responsible for SCOPA, the committee co-ordinator of SCOPA and Mr. Karreman, the editor of the house papers, to finalise the draft resolution in consultation with the representative of the Auditor- General, Mr. van der Hoven. This was done and the draft resolutions were submitted to SCOPA for consideration.

It is important to note that these were draft resolutions, which still had to be considered by SCOPA.

At no stage did the Speaker interfere or gave instruction for the "sanitation" of the draft resolutions. In fact, the Speaker has up until today not seen the draft resolutions prepared by SCOPA.

Statement issued by Theuns Botha Leader of Government Business, Western Cape Provincial Parliament, June 2 2011

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