Speaker, No 2 miss key ethics deadline
● National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete and her deputy, Lechesa Tsenoli, are among the tardy MPs who missed the deadline to submit their declarations of financial interests and related benefits.
Mbete and Tsenoli are on the list of 42 MPs who have been flagged as having missed last year’s deadline to submit their declarations to parliament’s joint ethics committee.
The 2017 register of members’ interests was released by the ethics committee in June this year, when the committee departed from the tradition of naming and shaming MPs and ministers who missed the deadlines.
According to sources in parliament, this was apparently done to spare Mbete and Tsenoli embarrassment.
Their failure to meet the deadline has raised questions in parliament about their attitude to the parliamentary ethics they are responsible for enforcing. The speaker is charged with censuring MPs whenever they violate the code.
Asked to confirm if Mbete and Tsenoli missed the deadline, parliament’s spokesperson, Moloto Mothapo, said the ethics committee was dealing with the issue. “What I know is that when the committee announced disclosures a couple of months ago they stated that some of the alleged late disclosures were being dealt with case by case, as precedence shows there could be some with valid reasons for doing so.
“They thus didn’t want to prematurely reveal names and cast aspersions on people who might otherwise be innocent upon reflecting on their cases. For this reason, I do not even know who is among the list of 40 or so alleged late submissions,” he said.
Tsenoli on Friday admitted to his tardiness, saying he has introduced systems in his office to ensure he does not miss the deadline in future.
He denied knowledge of any decision to spare certain MPs the embarrassment of being named and shamed.
Also on the list are three cabinet ministers and two deputy ministers as well as three MPs serving on the ethics committee and the entire UDM caucus of five MPs.
UDM chief whip Nqabayomzi Kwankwa said that four of the UDM MPs had missed the deadline due to an administrative bungle. But he insisted that party leader Bantu Holomisa had met the deadline.
Ethics committee co-chair Omie Singh said the body was still considering reasons behind the late submission.
“At an opportune moment, the joint committee on ethics and members’ interests will consider a recommendation on all cases of late submission. The committee has to date not had the opportunity to consider this matter,” he said.