Losing sight of principle and equity
TEDITOR’S VIEW HE National Assembly was supposed to have voted on President Jacob Zuma yesterday – expressing its confidence or otherwise in his continued tenure.
Speaker of the House Baleka Mbete had agreed to it, which would have involved recalling MPs, currently out of Cape Town on constituency duties, for a special sitting.
The Speaker agreed last week to postpone the debate indefinitely after the DA – which had called for the special sitting – supported the EFF and the UDM in their appeal for the Constitutional Court to be able to hear arguments on whether the Speaker will be within her powers to allow MPs to vote on this issue in secret.
It’s a highly contentious issue given the high stakes; the recall of the president and the fate of those who opt to defy the party protocols and instructions by the party whips in the House to register their lack of confidence in the man who not only rules the country but also their party.
It’s all very well to sit on the sidelines and call on people to follow their consciences, but it’s a different matter when a person who does exactly that faces losing an extremely well paid and guaranteed job. Which is why the opposition want the Speaker to allow MPs to be able to cast their ballots in secret. But no party allows its members to vote contrary to the whips’ injunctions; none of the opposition parties do, unless members have applied beforehand for a free vote and been granted it, as happened on the vote to allow for abortions or not. On that occasion all MPs, including those of the ANC, could vote with their conscience.
The ANC is no different. It’s precisely why the whips exist; not just as an anachronism from the old Westminster system of government, but to ensure that party representatives do what they are paid to do. Indeed, if they do follow the diktats of their own conscience they get fired.
It’s a nuance in the debate that’s been missing. There has been a tendency to lose sight of principle and equity in this helter skelter rush to unseat Zuma at any cost.
The opposition might be creating a precedent that could one day come back to haunt them.