If Jacob Zuma becomes president and is then convicted on corruption charges, a number of tactics can be used to protect him from losing the job or going to jail, Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Helen Zille said on Friday.
Writing in her weekly online letter to her supporters, Zille said that if the tactics work, ”our hard-won efforts to secure constitutional democracy will have come to naught. In order to protect one man, the African National Congress [ANC] will have discarded the principles it struggled for.”
Three tactics, she suggested, may be used.
The first is to use the ANC’s parliamentary majority to pass legislation or change the Constitution to grant a sitting president immunity from prosecution. ”This is the case in countries such as China, Chile and Sri Lanka,” she said, ”although the prospect of the majority party cynically changing the law to protect its president will be unprecedented.”
The second possibility is that Zuma may use his presidential powers to give himself a pardon. ”According to a senior source in the ANC, there are already whispers about the prospect of a presidential pardon for Zuma,” she wrote. ”There is no clear indication as to whether this would be constitutional, but this probably matters little to a man who has consistently said that the ANC is more important than the Constitution.”
She added: ”The third option is for Zuma to use his presidential powers to appoint a new head of the NPA [National Prosecuting Authority] willing to drop the charges against him. He will, no doubt, have no problem finding a loyal cadre willing to be deployed for this purpose.”
In the meantime, the president of the ANC is doing everything in his power to avoid justice.
”We are witnessing a concerted and sustained campaign being waged by his allies, his lawyers and also, possibly, a sympathetic judge to ensure that Zuma accedes to the presidency and stays there. Zuma’s guilt or innocence is secondary to this imperative,” Zille said.
”The attacks on the courts, the alleged attempts to sway judges and the delaying tactics all point to a deliberate strategy to influence the outcome of the court case.”
Zille concluded: ”It is fortunate that our judiciary remains largely impervious to these attempts to manipulate it. I remain confident that Zuma will have his day in court and that justice will be served, that is, unless Zuma becomes president before he goes to trial and abuses the powers of that office.” — I-Net Bridge