/ 31 August 2007

Floor-crossing: Judge slams ‘horse-trading’

A Cape High Court judge on Friday criticised what he called ''unseemly political horse-trading'' ahead of the floor-crossing window, and said it resembled transfer season in the English Premiership. Dennis Davis made the remarks before rejecting an application by the former general secretary of the Independent Democrats to overturn his expulsion from the party.

A Cape High Court judge on Friday criticised what he called ”unseemly political horse-trading” ahead of the floor-crossing window, and said it resembled transfer season in the English Premiership.

Dennis Davis made the remarks before rejecting an urgent application by the former general secretary of the Independent Democrats (ID), Avril Harding, to overturn his expulsion from the party.

The ID claimed Harding was seeking to start up or join another party.

Harding’s was one of four separate urgent applications expected to come before the court before midnight, when the window opens.

One of them is being brought by an expelled ID colleague of Harding’s in the National Assembly, Florence Batyi; another by three Western Cape ID councillors; and another by an African National Congress (ANC) councillor from Prince Albert.

On Thursday, the court turned down a bid by Cape Town ID councillor Achmat Williams to postpone his appeal hearing on his expulsion from the party, which was heard on Friday morning.

Davis said the Harding case was one in which the profoundest principles of natural justice had been raised by both parties.

”But this is not a case about natural justice on its own,” he said. ”It’s a case about floor-crossing.”

Crossing the floor was constitutional, he said.

But unfortunately, despite the ”lofty justifications” premised on democracy and the consciences of politicians, the entire process had been tarnished by ”unseemly political horse-trading”.

This made things extremely difficult for him in weighing up the Harding case.

To a very large extent the courts had to abstract themselves from this ”unseemly set of political considerations” and look at the principles of natural justice.

He found that Harding, who was offered a disciplinary hearing after his expulsion and the possibility of reinstatement, had not exhausted all the party’s processes before coming to court.

”He did it the wrong way round and seeks to put up a case that has no justification on the facts,” Davis said.

It was not for the courts to come to the aid of applicants who had taken the wrong course of action.

Davis also said that though Harding had complained that as a ”professional politician” he would lose his livelihood if he was deprived of his seat, that livelihood depended on the electorate that put him there.

Politicians could have no legitimate expectation of such a livelihood in perpetuity.

Doors will be open

Meanwhile, the ANC will welcome any public representative, subscribing to its policies, during the upcoming two-week window period for MPs, MPLs, and councillors to cross the floor to another party, the its parliamentary caucus said on Friday.

The caucus welcomed the beginning on Saturday of the floor-crossing period in Parliament, provincial legislatures and municipal councils in all provinces, it said in a statement.

Floor-crossing was intended to accommodate ”instances of party political realignment” between elections.

”This democratic tradition is consistent with that practised by developed democracies using the proportional representation electoral system across the world.

”It is also in line with rights to freedom of expression, opinion and association enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.”

The ANC was committed to accelerate the battle against unemployment and poverty, disease and crime, racial and gender imbalances, and further enhancing social transformation and national reconciliation.

”Over the 15-day floor-crossing window period, the ANC will welcome any member of parliament, provincial legislature or municipal council who subscribes to this contract the ANC [has] entered [into] with the people.

”[The] doors of our movement will be open to individuals who demonstrate an unequivocal desire to meet these critical needs of the South African people, not just to increase the organisation’s membership numbers,” the ANC said.

The window closes at midnight on September 15.

MPs, MPLs, and councillors can only cross once, and at least 10% of a party’s representatives in a given institution have to defect, not necessarily to the same party. — Sapa