There is a distinct difference between placing people in positions of power and the values that guide that process, from when power and authority are actually exercised on behalf of others.
There is good reason why, when electing representatives in a general election, or electing people to positions of power where they exercise authority, the election is conducted by secret ballot. It is so that the conferring of a mandate is free from duress, intimidation, threat, violence, manipulation and undue influence, and is done freely and fairly.
But the actual exercise of power and authority on behalf of others - which is what MPs and cabinets do in modern democracies - requires a different set of standards for testing fairness, where the values of openness, transparency, oversight, accountability and responsiveness are the virtues.
After all, we all want to know how, why and for what purpose the people who have exercised power and authority on our behalf have done so. We are incidentally also interested in who decided what, and in which way.
The constitutive principles and the performative components of democracy consequently require different standards of transparency. Secrecy for the former is clear-cut. Secrecy for the latter requires substantive justification.
The Constitutional Court in its secret-ballot judgment underscored this point. In doing so it leaves the decision regarding a secret ballot to the discretion of the speaker - subject to the stringent test of rationality as affirmed by courts in a range of cases.
In essence, then, the speaker can maintain the status quo and proceed with an open ballot. This will gain the support of one faction of the ANC but the chagrin and challenge of another, as well as of the opposition, which will wish to take the decision on review.
Should the speaker maintain the status quo, it will need a convincing argument why, in a context of intimidation and fear, it is rational to continue with an open ballot.
Arguments for a secret ballot in this instance may be for elected representatives to vote in accordance with their conscience, as servants of the constitution in a context free of fear and career-limiting consequences. Its credibility is staked on the outcome of removing an undesirable president.
But there are genuine concerns that ordering a secret ballot now will open the floodgates for strategic voting and manipulation on other contentious political and policy issues such as free choice, capital punishment and gay rights, where lobby groups might threaten legislators and policymakers when their voting records are public and those legislators support views contrary to the lobbyists.
In South Africa, where a conservative social morality prevails, majorities might support anti-progressive causes, especially on highly emotive subjects such as capital punishment, gay rights and abortion, should these be balloted secretly. Would progressives still support a secret ballot in these instances should they come up for review ?..