NO CONFIDENCE Electoral system favours party bosses
There are two things Justice Louis D Brandeis (1856-1941), a US judge, said that I find particularly instructive. “Those who won our independence … valued liberty as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty,” Judge Brandeis said.
He also said: “The most important political office is that of the private citizen.”
Since the office of the private citizen should be the highest office in our democracy, one of the ways in which we defend the rights of the citizen is by ensuring that in an election, such rights are protected through a secret ballot.
However, the primary task of those who are deployed by the people to represent them in Parliament and SA’s legislatures is to defend the highest office in our democracy, the office of the citizen, by always acting in the best interests of so-called ordinary citizens.
In the choice between an open ballot and a secret ballot, it is through the former that the rights of the citizen are better protected, because citizens will always be aware of the choices MPs and our legislatures make on their behalf.
In general, therefore, we should err on the side of transparency. An open ballot should be our factory setting and a secret ballot should be our fall-back position when circumstances dictate that we defend democratic outcomes through such a ballot.
Prior to Tuesday afternoon’s vote of no confidence against President Jacob Zuma, opposition parties argued that it was only through a secret ballot that members of the ANC would feel free to follow their consciences instead of the dictates of party bosses.
A secret ballot, it was argued by them, would protect these members from intimidation and threats. In fact, many verbal threats were directed by ANC leaders at those who would be directed by a secret ballot to support the motion of no confidence against the president.
I suspect that this was some of the background music that informed the decision by National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete to agree to a vote by secret ballot.
The problem is not a secret or open ballot. The problem is that we want to have our constitutional cake and eat it too. We have designed an electoral system that has the effect of privileging the wishes and political desires of the bosses of our political parties over the interests of voters and other citizens.
But we want our parliamentary representatives to privilege the interests of citizens over the wishes of party bosses.
Upon election, they must swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution, democracy, the country and us citizens when they have been elected on the basis of an electoral system upon which it must follow that their primary goal is to please their political parties and swear allegiance to the bosses of those political parties.
An authoritarian stream cuts through all political parties in the National Assembly despite our democratic impulses. Therefore, there is an element of illogic about all of this.
In the words of Justice Brandeis, “The logic of words should yield to the logic of realities.”
Since the words in the judgment on the motion of no confidence against the president are not the reality they seek to describe, the best way of bridging this gap between logic and political reality is to design a political system that will put more power in the hands of the citizen and less power in the hands of the party boss.
In any event, the opposition parties have always been more interested in the outcome of the no confidence vote than they have been in the means by which such an outcome would be achieved.
This has never been about an open or secret ballot.
It has always been about the voting procedure that opposition parties imagined would be the best weapon against Zuma.
Now their bluff has been called in two ways.
We were told that, because Mbete has no independent bone in her body, it was a fait accompli that she would call for an open ballot to protect the president.
Well, secondly, the decision to call for a secret ballot is a problem for opposition parties.
On Tuesday, they may have to show us where the ANC numbers that they promised disappeared to.
If the numbers they promised the nation materialise, SA will be a very interesting country on Tuesday afternoon.
If not, opposition parties may have to filibuster their way out of a potentially embarrassing situation. However, I am not persuaded Mbete will be the acting president from Tuesday.
AN AUTHORITARIAN STREAM … CUTS THROUGH ALL POLITICAL PARTIES IN THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY DESPITE OUR DEMOCRATIC IMPULSES