STATEMENT OF THE ANC YOUTH LEAGUE ON THE CONSITITUTIONAL COURT JUDGEMENT
23-JUNE-2017
The ANC Youth League has noted and welcomes the judgment of the Constitutional Court on the Application by Opposition Parties seeking an order compelling the Speaker of Parliament to decree a vote by secret ballot on a useless Motion of No Confidence on the President of the Republic.
The Constitutional Court has correctly schooled the opposition parties on the obvious fact that no court can or should dictate to the Speaker of Parliament on how to exercise discretionary Powers. The ANC Youth League is of the view that the Constitutional Court has successfully rejected an attempt by opposition parties to draw it into the theatre of natural political contestations in parliament.
We gallon these people to march back to their benches in parliament and debate the matter of the manner of voting and be prepared to accept whatever decision they collectively arrive at as parliamentarians; as they should have done from the onset.
The ANC Youth League has been warning South Africans that there is an attempt by Opposition Parties to surrender their democratic functions to politically oppose their ANC by hiding behind the skirts of the Constitutional Court even on matters that can and should simply be ventilated in parliament. They run to the Constitutional Court at the drop of a hat and thus attack the Doctrine of the Separation of Powers in an attempt to mask their failure to win political discussions in parliament.
We understand their desperate behaviour to be motivated by two flawed streams of logic. On the one hand, Opposition Parties seem to believe that they have an absolute right to get their way on any matter in parliament. Therefore if they lose a matter they automatically view the winning argument to be illegitimate and unconstitutional. To them, it appears that parliament is behaving in an orderly manner only when it resolves contentious political matters to their favour. This is an attempt at enforcing a Tyranny of the Minority. We reject this behaviour with all imaginable contempt.
On the other hand, the ANC Youth League has been observing an unsubstantiated but very arrogant assumption by Opposition Parties that they're paragons of moral virtue. They seem to have concluded that they have monopoly on what constitutes a 'conscientious vote'. They have been insisting that ANC Members of Parliament must 'vote with their conscience' to remove the President of the ANC who was elected by ANC MPs.
To their arrogant selves, conscience belongs only to a vote that favours their childish ambitions. This is absolute nonsense and moral opportunism. This moral opportunism is exposed by the fact that when their structures in other legislative assemblies behave in the very manner that they are demanding that ANC MPs must employ, they harass them with Lie Detector Tests as we saw the DA doing in Mogale City or employ street-hooliganism tactics of peeping over the shoulders of councilors when they cast their votes as we saw in the full glare of cameras the Deputy President of the EFF doing in the Johannesburg City Council last year.
We call on ANC Members of Parliament to correctly apply themselves and vote with their consciences in defending the ANC and the political mandate that it gave to them by rejecting any attempt to win power through the backdoor outside of General Elections. Whether this is by Secret Ballot or not, revolutionary consciousness and discipline must be observed!
The ANC Youth League once again warns South Africa about the double standards applied by Opposition Parties and the threat that this poses to our constitutional democracy. We all witnessed a dangerous scenario where the Opposition refuses to invest in the oversight role of parliament in dealing with issues but chooses, instead, to invite Chapter 9 Institutions and the Courts to perform their responsibilities for them. This has led to a dangerous situation in which other arms of state have been dragged into making directives that could have been better determined by parliament itself.
We all witnessed foolish celebrations by Opposition Parties by other sections of the public, especially media practitioners when the former Public Protector sought to impose limitations on the application of Section 84 of the Constitution by suggesting a parallel process to the appointment of a Judge to oversee a Commission of Enquiry. They stupidly celebrated this because it aided their hateful posture towards the person of the President of the Republic, Comrade Jacob Zuma.
It is these same opportunists who celebrated that attack on the constitution, simply because it appeared to hang President Jacob Zuma, who are now whining when the current Public Protector prescribes binding remedial action to the effect that the Constitution must be amended to a direction that they do not prefer on the South African Reserve Bank. The point here is that people must disabuse themselves of calling for extra-parliamentary interventions if they are not prepared to live with consequences that do not favour their own biases.
Statement issued by the ANC Youth League Secretary General, 23 June 2017
