The Democratic Alliance (DA) is confident that the President Jacob Zuma’s application for leave to appeal a court ruling that set aside the withdrawal of corruption charges against him will be dismissed.
“The president’s insistence on pursuing a losing case is out of sheer desperation to avoid having his day in court‚” said the party’s James Selfe on Wednesday. “It is an exercise into which more taxpayer rands will be needlessly plundered.”
Selfe said Zuma this week filed a replying affidavit “to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) seeking leave to appeal the North Gauteng High Court’s judgement that the discontinuation of the prosecution against him was manifestly irrational and borne from considerations not rooted in law”.
He “that there are no reasonable prospects of success nor are there any other compelling reasons why the appeal should be heard” as Zuma “persists in the narrative that there was a political conspiracy against him”.
Selfe said this itself “reaffirms the DA’s position that the dropping of the 783 charges of fraud and corruption levelled against Zuma by the then acting National Director of Public Prosecutions‚ Mokotedi Mpshe‚ was for political reasons and not legal ones”.
“We therefore contend that this application‚ like all the others that precede it‚ will be unsuccessful and we are optimistic that the SCA will dismiss this application for leave to appeal and in so doing uphold the North Gauteng High Court’s judgement declining the government respondent’s leave to appeal on 24 June 2016‚” Selfe said.
Read President Zuma's SCA reply here:
– TMG Digital
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