‘Huge responsibility’ for finance chief
ALF Lees, DA MP, has described his election as head of the party’s finances as a huge responsibility that would require him to ensure the official opposition always has funding.
Lees was one of the leaders directly elected to the federal council at the congress held in Port Elizabeth yesterday.
“It’s a feeling of confidence that is placed on me. There is a huge amount of work to be done. A political party can only function on a strong finance base, so this means that the finance team has to ensure there is funding,” Lees said.
“It is a huge responsibility to ensure funding is available,” he said about his immediate task of forming the DA’s war chest for next year’s municipal elections and the general elections in 2019.
Lees is no stranger to being involved in the party’s finances and serving on the federal council. He has served on the national finance committee since 2001 by virtue of being the head of the KwaZulu-Natal finance committee. But Lees will now have to decide whether to keep both finance positions or let go one of them.
“That is still a decision I would have to make. I will be advised by the province and national on what to do,” he said.
He pointed out that there was no provision in the party’s rules that barred him from not holding both positions. “There is no constitutional requirement to serve on one or the other.”
Pressed to say which position he would prefer to hold, Lees said: “I don’t have a view at the moment. It will ultimately be my decision.”
As a public representative for the DA, he was last year allocated uThukela district.
Lees has been a member of the DA since the merger of the Democratic Party and the New National Party.
His links with the party dates as far back as the days of the erstwhile Progressive Federal Party (PFP) and later the defunct Democratic Party.
In 1977, he was nominated by the PFP to oppose the National Party member in the Klip River constituency.
He cut his political teeth while a student at the University of Natal, now part of the University of KZN.
Lees, an accountant by profession, credits his liberal father for sparking in him an interest in politics, and subsequently got involved in the fight against apartheid.