If the Multiparty Charter of South Africa is successful in next year’s election, the leader of the DA, John Steenhuisen, is poised to lead government business.
In the current government, the leader of government business is the deputy president of the country, however, the pact has not been explicit in its communication that this would be the case in the coalition.
The seven parties currently involved in a national convention in Kempton Park, Johannesburg, agreed that the leader of the biggest party in the bloc would become the leader of government business in Parliament.
This was revealed at a media briefing on Thursday by the independent chairperson of the national convention, Professor William Gumede.
The convention began on Wednesday, at which the seven parties – the DA, ActionSA, FF Plus, IFP and other smaller parties – met to forge a plan to unseat the ANC from power. The convention ends on Thursday.
Gumede said:
They have agreed that the leader of the largest party in the bloc will become the leader of government business. The party that gets the most votes will automatically take charge of that position.
The DA, which is the official opposition in the country, is the biggest party in the bloc and likely to gain the most votes in next year’s election.
Gumede said the parties had agreed on power-sharing principles, but they had yet to decide whose name would be put forward as the president of the country.
He said the parties, which still needed to compete individually in the elections, would decide on it after the elections.
Gumede lauded the parties, saying they might have often been “hostile” to each other and “fought a lot”, but they managed to agree on the power-sharing principles.
He added that many coalitions at national level had failed because of power-sharing challenges.”Many coalitions have failed because they cannot agree on how to share power,” said Gumede.
He said the discussion on power-sharing was “robust and hard”, but an agreement was reached.
Other power-sharing issues include that those deployed to government would be chosen on merit.
Gumede said appointments would not be made based on cadre deployment, for example, nor would they be politically based. Also, those who made it to the executive would be subjected to lifestyle audits.
Gumede said that, in the coming months, the parties would meet to discuss policy issues.
He added:
So they commit to work on a fully-fledged policy platform in the months to come, based on the pillars of the agreement that they reached today. There is really a pillar of policy agreements and now they have to substantiate that much more fully in a fully-fledged manifesto in the coming months.
The parties were expected to give a media briefing on Wednesday afternoon to further announce what they had agreed on.
Source : News24