DA blames ANC for putting Public Protector appointment process at risk
The DA on Friday slammed the process to interview candidates for the high profile post of Public Protector as being mismanaged and unfair.
According to the DA, 14 interviews - some of which were over an hour long - were jammed into a single day, with overflow into the early hours of the following morning. The last candidate was called in for his hour long interview at 01:45 in the morning, after the panel had already spent almost 19 hours in the chamber.
"The fact that this urgency was created by ANC negligence compounds the issue. The ANC has approached this process as if it were an emergency, even though this scheduled appointment of a new Public Protector has been coming for 7 years now," DA MP and member of the committee Glynnis Breytenbach said.
Breytenbach says there are talks of opposition parties going to court.
"The other opposition parties have indicated that they are considering a legal challenge," she said.
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According to Breytenbach, the Chairperson pushed on with the process, despite objections raised by the DA and the other opposition parties.
"It seems that the ANC MPs are less interested in determining the best candidate than they are in hurrying the process along. This suggests that the ANC has already anointed their preferred candidate, a pliable lapdog who will not be a thorn in the side of corrupt ANC officials as Thuli Madonsela has been."