I am responding in connection with the article “Why is Ashley Rutherford standing independently in elections?”
In the article it is stated that she had decided in November 2015 to distance herself from politics and to stand as an independent.
READ: Why is Clr Ashley Rutherford standing independently in elections
This cannot possibly be true because Ashley actively sought re-election as a DA candidate by voluntarily filling in an application form by the required deadline and appearing before the party’s selection panel on June 2, 2016.
In order for residents to understand the full picture, the events unfolded as follows:
Ashley was ranked 150 out of 180 candidates on the DA list.
The selection panel (of which I was the chairperson) took a decision to place the candidates who earned the highest scores as ward candidates, because the panel felt that they were more rounded candidates and would represent the residents better (both inside and outside of Council) and project the vision and values of the DA most ably.
As an example of this principle, Tiziana Burtone, who was ranked in the top 10, was selected as the ward 92 candidate.
As far as the DA was concerned, Ashley Rutherford would have continued to represent the DA and the residents of ward 92 until August 2, 2016, the day before the local elections are due to be held.
It then came to the DA’s attention that Rutherford had told another DA candidate that she intended to stand as an independent candidate (an affidavit was obtained in this regard), and she also sent an SMS to the same candidate, which stated that she would not be voting DA in the forthcoming election.
On Friday, May 6, an election poster for the Independent Ratepayers Association of South Africa, featuring Ashley’s photograph, was posted on Ashley’s Facebook page. I asked her about it and her response was that the image had been photoshopped and was not legitimate.
The very next day, May 7, I received a screenshot of a message Ashley had sent a resident dating back to March 13, at 11.04am, stating that she has been put on the spot about standing as an independent candidate in the election “but I can’t put it out there yet as there will be major repercussions from the DA. Join the IRASA page and al (sic) wil (sic) be revealed in due course.’
From the above, it is quite clear that the IRASA poster was indeed legitimate and that Ashley had lied to me.
It is the same poster the Advertiser used to accompany the article to which I am responding and the same one that has been re-posted onto Ashley’s Facebook page.
Based on the above information and the fact that the DA’s own Constitution does not allow for any member to join another organisation whilst retaining DA membership, disciplinary action was initiated.
The DA’s Federal Legal Commission (FLC) was given the matter to investigate.
On Wednesday, May 11, at 7am, a letter was hand-delivered to Ashley giving her 24 hours to respond to her membership being terminated. Ashley did not object or submit any evidence to the contrary.
At 7.30am on Thursday, May 12, the FLC agreed to suspend Ashley’s membership, a decision which was ratified by the Federal Executive later that day.
The offices of both the City Manager and the Speaker of Ekurhuleni as well as the IEC, were all informed that Ashley’s membership of the DA had been terminated.
The City Manager’s office informed the IEC on May 19, 2016, of Ashley’s membership termination.
The IEC has informed Ashley that she is no longer a ward councillor.
On Friday, May 27, Ashley re-posted on her Facebook page the IRASA poster that was originally posted on May 6. This confirmed that the original post was not photoshopped.
As the local government election is taking place on August 3, there will be no by-election, which is unfortunate.
As far as Ashley’s other allegations are concerned, she is not standing as an independent, but as a candidate for a registered political party, namely IRASA.
The accusation made by Ashley is that the DA did nothing with regard to the water outages of 2014 and 2015, which begs the question: is she honestly saying that as the then ward councillor of ward 92 she did nothing to alleviate the plight of the residents?
I for one submitted the petition to Parliament about the water outages which resulted in Rand Water coming before the Portfolio Committee on Water and Sanitation where they had to present their plan on ensuring the pump stations have their own independent power supply.
This is indeed being phased in and this shows what political pressure can do.
I can assure the residents that DA public representatives take their positions seriously and when we win Ekurhuleni we will ensure residents get the services they deserve just as we do in Cape Town.
The fact of the matter is this: those of us in politics and in the DA are proud to be so, because we are the only viable party that can remove the current government.
We fight hard for people as the opposition in order to better their living conditions towards the ultimate goal: winning Ekurhuleni and controlling the purse strings as the majority party.
That is the only way to solve the huge problems in our towns and cities. It is simply naive and worse, untruthful, to imply that independents can achieve that.
Be that as it may, residents are free to choose in our democratic dispensation. I am merely informing them of the correct state of affairs.
