DA won’t forget questions for Zuma

Cape Town - 140520 - Mmusi Maimane and his wife Natalie speak to the Cape Argus at their hotel before the swearing in of new members of parliament and the first sitting of the new parliament. Reporter: Murray Williams Picture: David Ritchie (083 652 4951)

Cape Town - 140520 - Mmusi Maimane and his wife Natalie speak to the Cape Argus at their hotel before the swearing in of new members of parliament and the first sitting of the new parliament. Reporter: Murray Williams Picture: David Ritchie (083 652 4951)

Published Nov 28, 2014

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We will continue to call for President Zuma to account or resign – this is part of our work as the opposition, writes Mmusi Maimane.

A special sitting of Parliament was called for on Thursday by the Speaker to deal with parliamentary business that was not dealt with due to various delays and interruptions that have taken place at the start of the Fifth Parliament.

Before on Thursday, the Chief Whip’s Forum and subsequent to that the Programming Committee met to decide on the order of business.

It’s most likely that the outcome of those meetings will schedule debate on the Powers and Privileges report and then, the ANC through its majority, will adopt it, even though the opposition have declared the report illegitimate.

Like the Nkandla report of the ANC, key evidence was ignored and witnesses were not called for the sake of toeing the line of Luthuli House.

A very unlikely item to be placed on the Order Paper will be oral questions to President Jacob Zuma, who, through the protection of Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa, ANC Members of Parliament and the ANC chairperson (who moonlights as the Speaker of Parliament) has not completed an oral questions session.

President Zuma has failed to account to Parliament and the powers that be have not indicated that he intends to do so before the end of the year.

Even Deputy President Ramaphosa, who came rushing to the opposition like a knight in shining armour, could not commit to a date before the end of the year for the president to answer oral questions.

He in fact turned out to be a knight in shining tinfoil.

Deputy President Ramaphosa is complicit in a scheme cooked up at Luthuli House to keep President Zuma away from Parliament, in violation of the constitutional and parliamentary obligations that come with the Office of the President.

Furthermore, the deputy president tried to legitimise the president’s failure to account by driving a narrative that the opposition had agreed to such a deal.

A united opposition saw through this and publicly refused to be part of such a deal.

The DA is fully committed to getting Parliament working as intended and as laid down by the Constitution and the Rules of Parliament. A working Parliament not only engages in legislating for a better South Africa, but ensures that the president and the executive fully account to Parliament when they have not done their jobs.

Who else is the president answerable to?

When the president ducks and dives publicly answering questions in Parliament, he’s not just evading MPs, he’s failing to respond to the questions and needs of 52 million South Africans.

If President Zuma and the ANC are of the view that when Parliament reconvenes next year, the DA will have forgotten about the R1 trillion Russia nuclear deal, Nkandla, the Spy Tapes, the lacklustre economy, crime, poor service delivery – among other scandals – they are mistaken. We will begin where we left off.

We will return to Parliament with a renewed energy to fight the battle for accountability, which has been sorely missing from President Zuma’s presidency.

He can run but he cannot hide.

It is only a matter of time before it becomes extremely difficult for the ANC to explain or justify to the electorate why the president shows such disdain and arrogance for Parliament, and why it is “acceptable” for him to live in a R246 million palace, when millions of South Africans go to bed hungry and without the dignity a home gives.

By keeping President Zuma in office and shielding him from accountability, the ANC is sending out one message: he is above the law, and he does as he pleases.

We will continue to call for President Zuma to fully account or resign – this is part of our work as the official opposition. But we will not let him distract us from our effectiveness in Parliament.

While President Zuma might be away without leave, we will continue working, because that is what South Africa expects from the DA, and it is our commitment to fight for South Africans and build a better country.

* Mmusi Maimane is the DA’s parliamentary leader

** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media

Pretoria News

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