Chaos at Mandela Bay council meeting
A Nelson Mandela Bay Council meeting descended into chaos when several opposition councillors stormed out of a council meeting.
|||Port Elizabeth – A Nelson Mandela Bay Council meeting was rocked by scenes of disruption and chaos when several councillors from the Democratic Alliance (DA), United Democratic Front (UDM) and Congress of the People (COPE) stormed out of a council meeting on Wednesday.
Councillors were heard shouting and comparing the disruptions to scenes previously seen in the national Parliament.
UDM councillor Mongameli Bobani said opposition parties were having a problem with the way in which the Speaker Maria Hermans had been handling the council meeting on Wednesday.
Bobani said that it was “completely out” and it appeared as if the “ANC was on a campaign trail”.
He explained why councillors took the decision to walk out. “We were waiting for the Chief Whip to come back to the multi party, as we have agreed that the Chief Whip will take everything that we have discussed, go to the ANC caucus, and come back and decide as multi parties before the council meeting can adjourn, but they just decided to continue with the meeting. We are saying that the Chief Whip of the ANC has actually negotiated with the multi parties in bad faith and that is not procedural,” said Bobani
Bobani added that the ANC was holding the council to ransom because they wanted to push their own agendas.
“The speaker used to say herself, that unless the multi parties agree, the council is composed of multi parties, and therefore there was no reason that council meeting cannot continue up until all the parties agree on these particular issues as we used to do, but surprisingly today the speaker is changing.”
At an impromptu media briefing, DA Caucus Leader, Retief Odendaal, called out Hermans as biased and added that she was protecting Executive Mayor Danny Jordaan.
Odendaal said that councillors felt that the speaker was undermining their rights and was “blatantly abusing her power as speaker”.
“It has happened in the last couple months that councillors have made various untrue statements or misleading statements to the public and those statements could not be challenged by opposition parties, we say that’s a blatant abuse of power. When various DA councillors tried to raise motions of clarity on this matter in council today [Wednesday] in terms of the rules, Speaker Maria Hermans blocked this outright, without explanation or reason, exposing her political bias and her protection of Danny Jordaan,” said Odendaal.
“This directly undermines our Constitution, which gives elected public representatives the right to rise on points of order or clarity at any time during any sitting in any legislature, to take up issues for the people of the Bay,” he said.
Odendaal said that the DA would now send a letter to the MEC for local government to ask him to intervene and investigate the “bias” of the speaker.
“We will also write a letter to the speaker calling on her to obtain a legal opinion in order to assist her to interpret the standing rules of council, we will make it clear if we do not receive that legal opinion or feedback from her on how she going to deal with the rules of order by the next formal sitting of council, the DA will consider taking legal action,” he said.
African News Agency
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