DA'S MISCHIEF ON INFORMATION BILL
The Office of the ANC Chief Whip rejects the call by the DA for Parliament to conduct a rerun of its voting on the Protection of State Information Bill, which was passed on Thursday by the National Assembly.
The DA seeks to use the technical glitch around ANC Chief Whip Dr Motshekga's vote, which the system erroneously captured as 'No' even though he pressed otherwise, to suggest that the entire system is dysfunctional and all votes were incorrectly captured. This is an act of desperation and posturing. Seemingly the DA is clutching at straws and is resorting to some futile filibustering expedition with a hope to frustrate a democratic decision of the National Assembly.
Minor technical glitches such as that relating to the Chief Whip's vote do happen sometimes, despite Parliament's best intention to ensure a 100 percent trouble-free voting sessions. Indeed no technological system in the world is immune from technical malfunctions. Parliament is mindful of this, hence the established practice that after every voting session a voting report is immediately printed out and distributed amongst all whips of political parties to check any inaccuracies.
If the DA believes some of its MPs' votes were incorrectly captured, it should have raised the matter through this process rather than cast aspersion on the entire voting process. Indeed it is the party whips that approve and sign off voting reports. It is naïve to hope to quash a democratic process on technicalities.
Despite DA parliamentary leaders claiming the entire opposition is united on this Bill, the voting statistics reflects that over 60 opposition MPs failed to pitch for this crucial vote. Only 74 out of a total of 136 opposition MPs voted on the Bill. This hardly augurs well for a "united opposition" the DA usually propagates. We believe that there is an appreciation amongst a number of opposition MP regarding the huge work done on this Bill and the significant changes made since its introduction to Parliament five years ago.
As the majority party in this institution, we are not losing any sleep regarding the threat to challenge the constitutionality of this Bill in the Constitutional Court. This quality draft legislation that we have today can pass the constitutional muster any day.
This Bill has been redrafted to include views obtained from broad consultation process with the public and various stakeholders, with legal experts examining each clause with a fine-too comb to ensure it doesn't fall foul of the constitutional guarantees and requirements. Very few Bills have gone through such careful, lengthy and comprehensive process since 1994.
Statement issued by the Office of the ANC Chief Whip, April 25 2013
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