ONLY A COALITION CAN UNSEAT THE ANC

WE ARE now into the second half of the 2019 election campaign. The polls show that no opposition party can beat the ANC. But there is a prospect that by forming a coalition, the opposition parties could unseat the ruling party.

Voters could bring the government down. That is within reach. But to do so, opposition parties need to stop peddling the illusion that they are “in it to win it”. They are not going to win, no matter how split the ANC is.

The only alternative at this stage is to form a coalition government that can share power. A joint venture is distinct from the two or more parties that form it. In this case, it would take 51% of the national vote to unseat the ANC.

That is 3% x 17 (51%). DA leader Mmusi Maimane has said that he wants to scale down the Cabinet to 15 people. So you can have the offices of president, deputy president and 15 Cabinet members – that’s 17. It means that in a coalition government, for every 3% of the vote you win, you can have a Cabinet seat.

So the EFF could get two or three seats in the Cabinet, plus the office of deputy president, as runner-up.

The DA would get the office of president as well as about five or six seats in the Cabinet. The rest of the seats would be allocated to those other parties that are expected to win some seats – like UDM, Cope, and Good.

By combining forces like this, a “clean coalition” could put forward a credible and competent Cabinet. And it would be clean! No

smallanyana skeletons lurking in the closet.

The opposition parties should not leave this prospect to sort itself out after the elections. They need to read the signs of the times and pledge themselves to a coalition. Now, in the second half of the election campaign.

Doing so could have the effect of swinging votes from the incumbent to the new contender.

One way to read the polls is that a clean coalition could be on the cards. So embrace it! The second half of the campaign should see political parties pledging their support to form a functioning coalition this year. This will involve some new tools – to arrive at “tolerable compromises” as a coalition of parties that have nothing in common.

In fact, the cornerstone of the coalition would be to clean up the government and to empower the National Assembly. This kind of coalition is the best way to outgrow the ANC’s bent to “vanguardism”. Its party structure, the NEC, should not be running our country. The state should be run by its National Assembly. That is the way that the Constitution reads.

A coalition government would put the Constitution first and the parties second. Whereas under the ANC there are always two centres of power.

A clean coalition government would put power into the hands of the people, instead of the parties wielding the power by telling MPs how to vote. That is a genetic throwback to when the ruling party was a liberation movement.

The electorate needs to open its eyes to the risks of re-electing the ANC. It is a party that could break into open warfare on May9, the day after the elections. What it calls “unity” is really “gridlock”. Because the party is predominant, it could even recall the president.

In other words, we are not electing Ramaphosa and he could conceivably not survive the five-year term of another majority mandate. You cannot vote for Ramaphosa without voting for Magashule and Mabuza, too.

At this stage, only a clean coalition could unseat the ruling alliance. A new alliance must be formed by the opposition parties recognising that this is now their best shot at replacing the ANC this year. | Voices360.com