Time to drag Mbete to the ConCourt for shielding Zuma: Cope

11 February 2016 - 12:47 By TMG Digital

The Congress of the People (Cope) lamented that “the precincts of Parliament are today teeming with security personnel”. “The people's Parliament is in danger of becoming something other than the Constitution envisaged‚” the party said.“Cleaners‚ secretaries and many other people working in Parliament were given the day off. Police will be everywhere‚” it added‚ describing security measures taken to control three different marches protesting against President Jacob Zuma on Thursday.And Baleka Mbete is to blame.Cope’s Dennis Bloem said it was the speaker’s fault that Parliament had “patently failed in the past seven years to scrutinise and oversee executive action because Mbete will not allow that”.“Parliament has become less and less a national forum and more and more an executive appendage willing to do the president’s bidding without any questions asked‚” said Bloem.“To her‚ protecting the president from scrutiny and oversight trumps every other consideration.”He said that if Mbete “persists in blocking both scrutiny and oversight of the president‚ it will be absolutely necessary to take her to the Constitutional Court for wilfully and defiantly subordinating the legislature to the executive and thereby actively undermining the principle of the separation of powers enshrined in our Constitution”.“To all intents and purposes‚ the legislature is disgracefully kneeling before the President‚ not standing up in its own right to discharge its constitutional obligation of rigorously holding him to account. “It is time to drag the Speaker‚ continuing to blow kisses to the President‚ to the Constitutional Court to restore Parliament to the people as conceived of in the Constitution.”..

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