De Lille faces second no confidence vote

MAYOR Patricia de Lille faces another internal DA motion of no confidence after two-thirds of the party’s councillors voted in favour of getting the ball rolling to oust her.

The DA’s recall clause, dubbed the “De Lille Clause”, will be applied if the party’s federal executive approves the DA council caucus request for an internal no confidence motion.

JP Smith, deputy caucus leader standing in for a suspended De Lille, yesterday said the caucus overwhelmingly agreed to have a second no confidence motion put to the vote.

He said there was a two-thirds majority in favour of the no confidence vote, while 10% of councillors abstained. The DA has 154 councillors. “This is an internal no confidence motion and I am writing this in terms of the clause adopted at our congress. We have to write to the federal executive chairperson who has to approve this. Once we hear from the federal executive another meeting will be called,” he said.

The clause reads: “If the president, a premier, a mayor, or any other public representative elected or appointed to any executive position in a DA government has lost confidence of his or her caucus, the federal executive may, after giving him or her the opportunity to make representations to it, resolve to require him or her to resign from his or her office within 48 hours.”

“Failure by that member to resign will lead to the cessation of his or her membership of the party...”

Asked for comment, De Lille said: “I have not been informed of the their decision. I can only wait for their notification.”

Meanwhile, civic organisations, opposition parties and business have slammed the city council for its failure to spend more than 40% of its capital budget, while proposing to increase water tariffs by 26.9%.

Cape Chamber of Commerce president Janine Myburgh said citizens were seeing the result of the crisis in the City leadership with a series of disagreements between some of the leading figures on the mayoral committee.

“The result has been a logjam, and decisions have been delayed or not been taken. We don’t, at this stage, know who was responsible for the problems but it is likely that the blame lies with both sides in the argument. One cannot have motions of no confidence in the mayor and not expect consequences. The result is that too much energy has gone into the political situation at the expense of capital projects,” she said.

“The sale of electricity and water have fallen and with this source of revenue in decline, the City has serious problems. It increasingly relies on rates income from property owners and this narrow tax base is now becoming very vocal,” she said.

“It is no surprise that the City has failed to spend the money” said Philip Bam, secretary of the Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance There is less than three months left of the financial year. How will they spend money now at this stage. What happens to that money?” Bam said.

Sandra Dickson, founder of the group Stop COCT, said it appeared that the DA has no control over the finances.

“The City has failed our residents again. First with all these punitive charges, then a massive budget with increases that are rocketing each year.

“Now we hear, that the City is not spending their money. It just seems as if the council does not have the capacity to do what is needed because they are fighting each other,” she said.