The public must demand that urgent action is taken on this issue

ID Chief Whip Lance Greyling is disappointed that the major political parties in Parliament have once again chosen to forego an opportunity to regulate the private funding of political parties.

This disapointment comes after the Chief Whips forum, once again used delaying tactics to prevent the ID's motion for the establishment of an ad hoc committee to regulate private funding of political parties, from being implemented.

"The ID has experienced these kinds of delaying tactics many times in the past during our campaign to ensure that the private funding of political parties is subjected to stringent regulations," stated Greyling.

"An ID motion to debate the establishment of an ad hoc committee to formulate this legislation was in fact submitted three years ago and various means were employed to stop it from being considered.

The ID then took this proposal to the Joint Rules Committee where they once again referred it back to the Chief Whips Forum. The ID was therefore hoping that a final resolution could be taken at today's Chief Whips Forum that would once and for all establish this much needed committee.

Instead what we witnessed was the complete lack of political will amongst the major political parties to agree to the establishment of any such mechanism to deal with this issue. We have once again seen this issue being postponed indefinitely while political parties supposedly take this back to their caucuses for discussion.

Every major political party has in fact made public pronouncements on this issue in the past but it has never been backed up by any attempts to make tangible progress on this issue. The ANC even promised the High Court in 2005 that they would soon be bringing legislation to this effect in the near future, yet five years down the line we are still waiting! The DA has also shown no urgency on this issue and it is quite remarkable that they have not even discussed this motion in their caucus given that a letter was written to them four weeks ago urging their support on this motion.

The issue of regulating private funding of political parties is of utmost importance to our democracy and good governance principles as has been shown up in the latest scandal involving the ANC's investment arm Chancellor House. The public has rightfully demanded that this issue be dealt with urgently so as to avoid any future conflicts of interests and party funding scandals.

Senior members of the ruling party have also indicated their desire for such legislation yet none as yet has been forthcoming. It is time for political parties to be held accountable to the public on this issue and the major political parties need to be pressured into giving a timeline as to when this issue will be resolved.

This is simply too an important issue to be once again kicked into touch so that the major political parties can get away with preserving what is clearly an untenable and immoral status quo.

Statement issued by Lance Greyling, MP, Independent Democrats chief whip, May 5 2010

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