The Alex News reporter Leseho Manala reflects on the recent pre-election campaign and the role of parliament.
Winners of the recent national general elections will when sworn into public office, humble themselves with their hands over the Bible.
They will promise to serve and save the country and humanity to the best of their ability, commit not to steal, remain forthright, accountable and in good standing. A tall order indeed for many politicians according to the recent past.
Some losers of the bruising election war will opt to jump ship. In the process, they will hurl insults at their former political home as they seek to gain favour with a prospective new home of a former sworn enemy. They will reveal secrets and shenanigans of previous homes that gave succour and packs proportional to their influence before disgrace befell them.
For politicians, floor crossing is a means for survival and desire to remain relevant in this cut-throat field where, as they say, there are no permanent friends or enemies. They cross over when their political clout and standing among peers wanes, fall out of favour with their superiors and feel humiliated when downgraded in the eligibility list for parliament. Their pride, ego and unquenchable lust for power gets the better of them, particularly against former juniors who would have acquitted themselves well and deserve the rise in hierarchy. The first willing suitor becomes their prospective ‘best next’ bedfellow, a new home in which to nudge out others unsuspecting of the magnitude of their lust in working themselves back into parliament and its frills. Packs, power and financial security offered by parliament are just too good to lose for those who would previously have tested them.
Regrettably, parliament has not taken interest to censure and make its members committed public and civil servants. Few of them seldom do while on occasional recess. But, they still opt to engage with only the core of their support base regardless of many inter-party citizens of their constituency who would have voted for them.
Others lucky to be in parliament, prefer acting to the gallery through self-defeating and demeaning conduct. Hopefully, the next parliament will be spared the boxing spectacles. Like most physical confrontations, this shameful behaviour will not carry favour with the voters anymore but expose their inability to use the power of ideas and persuasion to help resolve the bread-and-butter issues still daunting the electorate 25 years into democracy.
The magnitude and years of unresolved challenges have also united citizens previously divided along party political affiliation. They are more against the entrenching culture of graft. They wait anxiously to see those with soiled hands prosecuted for violating the public’s trust. It won’t bode well for the next government to include these wrongdoers. At last, the ANC veterans have implored their integrity commission to block the ‘bad apples’ from further disgracing the party, parliament and the voter. They also urged President Matamela Cyril Ramaphosa in the event of his party’s victory, not to honour them with executive authority, presumably at all three spheres of government. They deserve nothing but shame in orange uniforms after the commissions of inquiry and the new-look national prosecuting authority is done with them.
