‘Caravan consultation’ slammed by opposition

The following article was published online by the Pretoria News

The ANC has been accused of abusing parliamentary procedure after announcing that it will embark on its own campaign of “public meetings” to solicit views on the controversial Protection of State Information Bill.

ANC chief whip Mathole Motshekga said on Tuesday that the ANC had set up two political committees – an “ANC Information Bill committee” and an “Information Bill unit” – to co-ordinate its interaction with the public on the proposed legislation.

Critics have slammed the move, saying it is “unprecedented” and “unacceptable” given that the bill has been tabled in the National Assembly and the ANC’s approach would exclude other parties represented in Parliament.

The ANC’s info bill committee would be responsible for “co-ordinating public engagement with representatives from civil society, NGOs, community based
organisations and interested individuals on the draft bill”, Motshekga said.

“This will ensure that we do not only listen to the views of well-financed lobby groups with means to travel to Cape Town, but also to those of ordinary people in the remotest villages,” he said.

The Info Bill unit, operating from Motshekga’s office, is tasked with “receiving and collating submissions on the draft bill for consideration”.

DA MPs Dene Smuts and David Maynier, both of whom served on the now-defunct ad hoc committee that processed the bill, have said any further submissions or hearings should be properly advertised and held openly in Parliament.

They said the ANC’s go-it-alone approach is an “unprecedented abuse of parliamentary procedure”.

“A veneer of public ventilation of the issues in provinces and ‘the remotest villages’ will fool no one,” Maynier and Smuts said.
“Consultative caravans like these are the time-honoured ANC method of manipulating public opinion and then presenting the pre-determined result as the voice of the people,” they added.

ACDP MP Steve Swart said the move was “totally unacceptable” and that all parties represented in Parliament should be involved in “any process dealing with the controversial bill”.

“It is unheard of for one political party to hold public hearings alone on a bill serving before Parliament, without other opposition parties being present,” he said.
“Why are opposition parties being excluded?”

The ANC removed the bill from the National Assembly’s daily programme on September 19, just hours before MPs were to debate and vote on it.

At the time, Motshekga told journalists the draft law was the “culmination of a truly democratic process which entailed extensive public consultation with a wide range of representatives of our society, public debates and robust engagement among political parties in Parliament”.

He emphasised that the ANC was happy with the “quality draft bill” as it stood and said there was no question of withdrawing it from the parliamentary process.
He added, however, that there were “interested parties” whose voices had not been heard, but he could not say who those parties were.

ANC caucus spokesman Moloto Mothapo said that Parliament would not be expected to fund the ANC’s consultation drive as “this is not a parliamentary process”.
Asked where the money would come from, he said: “Ja, well, we will devise the means.”

Asked what would happen to the information gathered by the party and how this would feed into the parliamentary process of dealing with the bill, Mothapo said he could not comment on this as he would be “pre-empting the process”.

The chairman of the SA National Editors’ Forum, Mondli Makhanya, said he found it “perturbing” that a parliamentary process “has been turned into a party-political process”.

“We were hoping that further consultations on the bill – as announced by the ANC last week – would be a proper consultation process run by Parliament. There is a reason we have a Parliament.”

Makhanya said the route chosen by the ANC would make it easy for the party to “bus ANC branch members to the meetings”.

“And we all know what the outcome of that will be. Then they will come back to Parliament and say ‘the people’ say.”

The ANC’s move last week – together with the latest announcement – has fuelled speculation that the real reason behind these steps is to give the ANC time to bring some of its wavering members into line on the bill.

It also needs to convince Cosatu, which remains an outspoken critic of the bill.

Source Pretoria News