Speaker tells protector to withdraw comments or face personal costs
Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane must withdraw her “ulterior purpose” accusations against her, or face the prospect of being ordered, again, to personally pay another expensive legal bill, says National Assembly speaker Thandi Modise.
Modise dismissed Mkhwebane’s argument that impeaching her over things done during her investigations or statements made in her reports would infringe on the constitutionally enshrined independence of her office as a “fallacy”, “absurd” and incompatible with the accountability provisions contained in the constitution.
The speaker made the arguments in court papers filed in the high court in Cape Town last week in Mkhwebane’s urgent court bid to halt the possible parliamentary inquiry into her fitness to hold office.
Modise, becomes the latest in a long line of high-profile officials who have asked for or been granted personal costs orders against the public protector.
Last week, lawyers for SA Revenue Service commissioner Edward Kieswetter contended that the way in which the public protector had conducted herself in her dispute with the revenue service tax agency over her attempt to subpoena former president Jacob Zuma’s tax information justified a punitive costs order being issued against her.
In Mkhwebane’s court bid to urgently stop any potential parliamentary inquiry from proceeding, she argues that Modise’s decision to approve a motion that could lead to her facing such an inquiry points to papers.”“I trust that ... “advocate the narrative that the speaker is acting with an ulterior motive”.
“I emphatically deny that I have been acting with an ulterior motive, Modise said in her court Mkhwebane will withdraw this unfortunate allegation. Should she however persist with it, I shall ask this honourable court, as a mark of its displeasure, to make a punitive costs order against advocate Mkhwebane in her personal capacity.”
‘TAKING SIDES’
Mkhwebane This week, ’the s report ’high court on his in Pretoria will rule on President Cyril Ramaphosas challenge to CR17 election campaign funding, which she found was implicated in money-laundering.
Mkhwebane has accused Modise of “taking sides” with Ramaphosa in this case, because the speaker’s office had joined the president in fighting to overturn some of the remedial action contained in the public protector’s report.
Modise is adamant that this accusation is baseless, because she and her deputy have their own serious concerns about the legality of Mkhwebanes directives — which they contend “amounted to impermissible prescriptions to the ’National Assembly about the manner in which it exercises oversight over the executive ” .
Mkhwebane had demanded that parliament against Ramaphosa take“for deliberately action misleading” the National Assembly about a R500,000 campaign donation he received from Gavin Watson, the late CEO of corruption accused facilities management company Bosasa. She also demanded that he be ordered to disclose his campaign funders to parliament.
Modise maintains that Ramaphosa is not an MP, and parliament can therefore not take action against him.
Mkhwebane contends that the several court rulings made against her in which her honesty, competence and impartiality have been questioned cannot be a basis or a finding that she is guilty of impeachable conduct.