There’s no blueprint, but a slow-burn ”organic” realignment of opposition parties, led by the Democratic Alliance, has begun.
DA parliamentary leader Athol Trollip confirmed that his party is in talks with other opposition parties about combining forces to fight the 2011 municipal elections.
The realignment is a key part of the DA’s five-year plan for its parliamentary team, which includes lobbying for more mini-debates and compelling ministers to answer parliamentary questions and be held accountable.
Trollip predicts that local government elections will leave the ANC vulnerable and present the first real opportunity for meaningful realignment. Trollip said: ”We are looking at 16 to 18 months before words will translate into concrete agreements.”
A combined opposition force will put more muscle behind the plan.
Exiting DA chief executive Ryan Coetzee, who quit Parliament this week to join Western Cape Premier Helen Zille as a special adviser, said there is ”no need to rush”.
”We want it to be organic and to result from a substantial period of interaction,” said Coetzee, who lost out to Trollip in the race for the DA’s parliamentary leadership.
Trollip believes the realignment plan will eventually involve the ruling party. ”The ANC is starting to fracture. Not everyone in the party is comfortable with the political direction that it is taking.”
It might be ”pre-emptive” to say what this collaboration will look like, but the parties are sharing concerns about the ANC’s ”disproportionate cut of political power and the need to balance the political scales”, he said.
Expectations that the DA will have a better relationship with the ANC in the new parliamentary term are fading fast.
Trollip admitted that he waited in vain for the expected invitation to meet President Jacob Zuma, a move that would have signalled a new era of less acrimonious engagement between the DA and the ANC.
”But I eventually had to write to him and have not heard anything back, not even an acknowledgement of receipt.”
Congress of the People president Mosiuoa Lekota said his party supports a realignment of opposition forces to take on the ANC. ”It is of no use to have myriad political parties that make no impact. We must look to whether we can persuade other political formations to form a bigger, more effective opposition and for that lots of consultation is needed.”
Lekota sees the main stumbling block being the political parties themselves. ”It is about whether we can get political parties to recognise the crying need for effective critique and agree to merge into one political party.”