OPPOSITION'S COMPLAINTS ABOUT MINUTES DISINGENUOUS

The Office of the ANC Chief Whip dismisses as gravely disingenuous certain opposition parties' complaint, alleging that there was deliberate distortion in the minutes of the joint sitting of Parliament on Thursday. The claim is that the minutes were distorted to mislead as they did not capture the points of orders and certain details of events that unfolded during the President's state of the nation address. We note and appreciate the Chairperson of the NCOP's clarification regarding this matter this afternoon.

The complaint of the opposition was indeed without basis, was made either out of ignorance of the tradition regarding minutes of plenary sittings, or was simply motivated by sheer mischief. Either way, the complaint was unfortunate as it cast aspersion on the integrity of the hardworking, honest and non-partisan parliamentary staff merely for cheap political points.

The time-honoured minute-taking tradition of Parliament is that the minutes strictly capture only the business of the session as reflected on the Order Paper (the programme of the day). All the minutes of previous sittings bear testimony to this fact.

Minutes are by nature not transcripts that capture even the minute details of the meeting, but a record of the core business of the House. The common practice is that Parliamentary Hansard serves as the transcript of the sittings and captures all the finer details relating to what transpired in the House. The minutes are therefore read together with the Hansard.

If it is the wish of some opposition parties to change this longstanding format of parliamentary minute capturing, such should be done through available parliamentary process, rather than engage in opportunistic posturing.

The complaints raised by some opposition leaders in the House yesterday were therefore dishonest and were made to deliberately mislead the public for cheap political point scoring. We are disturbed that the integrity of Parliament staff has been tarnished by this reckless grandstanding.

Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, February 18 2015

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