The EFF has announced that it will boycott the Presidency budget vote in parliament today, saying that its presence would “legitimise a constitutional delinquent who violated his oath of office”.
According to the red berets, President Cyril Ramaphosa, through his current legal challenge, is attempting to avoid accountability over the Phala Phala scandal.
The EFF says it does not believe Ramaphosa deserves an audience in parliament until impeachment proceedings against him are concluded.
In a statement, party spokesperson Sinawo Tambo urged South Africans to remember how before the National Assembly could vote on the Section 89 independent panel report in December 2022, Ramaphosa approached the courts to have it reviewed and set aside.
However, following the ANC majority vote to reject the report, the president withdrew that court bid — a move Tambo alleges was a “transparent effort to frustrate and delay constitutional accountability”.
“After the ANC abused its parliamentary majority to shield Ramaphosa, he believed he had won and that the report had been buried. The moment he was protected by the ANC caucus, the review application, in his view, was no longer necessary. This means he felt no need to, on a moral and ethical basis, clear his name and was only interested in preventing any threat to his stay in office.”
The EFF spokesperson said it was only after the recent Constitutional Court judgment, which found that parliament’s rejection of the Section 89 panel report was unconstitutional and irrational, that the president is again resorting to litigation.
“Ramaphosa is once again attempting to evade accountability. Rather than subjecting himself to the constitutional process prescribed by law, he has launched yet another review application in an attempt to subvert the impeachment committee and frustrate the implementation of the court judgment.”
Tambo criticised what the EFF interpreted as the president mobilising state resources to protect himself and the truth about Phala Phala instead of subjecting himself to scrutiny and accountability.
“One must therefore ask: if he is not guilty, what is it that this president is trying to hide? What is he afraid of? The conduct of Cyril Ramaphosa represents one of the greatest contradictions in South Africa’s constitutional democracy. He occupies the highest office in the land and is entrusted with defending the constitution; yet he continuously seeks to undermine constitutional mechanisms whenever they threaten his personal political interests.”
The speaker also faced scrutiny, with the red berets having accused her of continuing to demonstrate that her loyalty lies with the ANC and the president rather than with parliament and the constitution.
“As the custodian of the Section 89 process, speaker [Thoko] Didiza has a constitutional responsibility to defend the integrity of parliament’s accountability mechanisms. Her reluctance to oppose Ramaphosa’s attempts to frustrate and delay the impeachment process is a clear indication that she is complicit in efforts to sabotage constitutional accountability.”
Tambo maintained that this is not surprising as Didiza is an ANC deployee, for whom protection of ANC political interests is the primary responsibility.
“Her conduct throughout this matter has confirmed that the ANC is prepared to subordinate constitutional obligations in the protection of Cyril Ramaphosa. Her predecessors, Baleka Mbete and Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula, acted in the same manner during the Nkandla scandal and in the early stages of the Phala Phala saga, respectively.”
The party said it believed the same script was unfolding before its eyes and thus had rejected the budget vote during the Presidency debate.
“We reject Cyril Ramaphosa and everything his presidency represents.”
TimesLIVE
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