PP move against Ramaphosa rejected
Parliament’s Section 194 Committee tasked with determining Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s fitness to hold office as Public Protector will not summons President Cyril Ramaphosa to testify, a move that raises the spectre of a further delay should Mkhwebane decide to resort to the courts on the matter.
MPs – backed by legal advice – decided yesterday against compelling the President to appear before the committee as Mkhwebane had requested.
Committee chairperson Qubudile Dyantyi said the committee found the reasons in Mkhwebane’s request for the summons to be irrelevant to the committee’s mandate.
‘There is no need to subpoena the President,’ ANC MP Xola Nqola is quoted as saying in a Business Day report.
‘The matters which have been raised are not relevant to the matters we need to check.’
FF Plus MP Corné Mulder agreed. ‘I do not think that there is any need for the President to be summoned with regard to this specific process,’ he said.
Brett Herron, from the GOOD party, disagreed. ‘I don’t think we should simply say that the President’s evidence is irrelevant. I think the Public Protector has an obligation to convince this committee that the evidence the President could give is relevant.’
Governing party MPs Doris Dlakude and Violet Siwela were also against issuing the summons to Ramaphosa.
The committee heard that the oversight process related to the conduct of Mkhwebane, and while Parliament had oversight over the President, the committee was not mandated to conduct this oversight, notes a Daily Maverick account of yesterday's proceedings.
It had ‘a singular task’ of establishing the truth of the charges against Mkhwebane and reporting back to the National Assembly. The National Assembly would then vote on impeachment.
Article disclaimer: While we have made every effort to ensure the accuracy of this article, it is not intended to provide final legal advice as facts and situations will differ from case to case, and therefore specific legal advice should be sought with a lawyer.
