Many African National Congress MPs are not performing properly and should be fired, the Democratic Alliance said on Wednesday.
”It is a fact that the average ANC MP is not up to the job. At least 100 of them should be fired and replaced by people who are competent,” DA chief whip Douglas Gibson said in a statement on Wednesday.
He was reacting to criticism of opposition parties by Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, contained in a newspaper interview published earlier in the day.
”In [the interview] … the deputy president argues that political parties should stop making a fuss about a dominant presidency and instead send strong candidates to a weakened Parliament.
”Instead of pointing fingers, the deputy president, and her boss [President] Thabo Mbeki, who is after all the leader of the ANC, should take a long hard look at the nomination regulations of the ANC with a view to finding and promoting candidates of merit.”
The ruling party will do well to consider a DA proposal that Parliament should cut the number of MPs by 50 members ”and use the saving to pay better salaries and provide proper support for MPs”.
Power had indeed been over-concentrated in the Presidency, Gibson said.
South Africa’s problem with ”supine” public representatives was less a function of the opposition fielding poor-quality candidates than it was of the ANC’s own internal political culture.
”The ANC’s attachment to democratic centralism and its policy of cadre deployment are inimical to the constitutional imperative of an independent Parliament exercising oversight over the executive,” he said. — Sapa