Opposition to sue 'tyrannical' Parliament
Sharon Mathala | Tuesday March 14, 2023 06:00
The opposition parties dramatically walked out of Parliament as a demonstration on Friday. Speaking at a press conference, explaining why they walked out, the opposition said it did not want to legitimise bad conduct.
On the events leading up to Friday, the opposition parties said the ruling Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) brought a motion to dissolve all parliamentary committees.
“We opposed their motion because we believed the committees were formed and endorsed by Parliament legally. The BDP using their muscle and numbers in parliament refused this saying they are the majority in parliament and that this should be reflected through their dominance in these structures and committees,” claimed UDC member of Parliament (MP) for Mahalapye West, David Tshere.
According to Tshere, the ruling party wanted to introduce the ratio of five BDP MPs and three opposition MPs to make up parliamentary committees. This according to the opposition is a way of silencing and minimising accountability for BDP, as the committees are oversight bodies.
“If a committee is made up of eight people and five of those are BDP MPs, it means they can simply form a quorum with the five of them and take decisions even without the opposition. The committees will now be an extension of the Executive. They don’t want to account,” he said. “We have met as a caucus and resolved that we should take this matter to court.
We will be serving the National Assembly with the intent to sue. We have given them a 30-day notice.” Turning to the Friday incident, the opposition says it staged a walkout because it did not want to legitimise the request for a P2 billion supplementary budget.BDP members say the supplementary budget was agreed upon by a committee.
“The composition of this committee is made up of BDP members. When they (BDP) announced that Honourable (Tumisang) Healy will present the supplementary budget on behalf of a committee, we again rose to object saying that there cannot be any committee because we are still dealing with the matter, especially the composition and ratio of the committees. We refused this.
We tried to explain this to the Speaker but realising we are failing we decided to walk out so we don’t legitimise their process,” Tshere said.
The opposition says they have since served the National Assembly and the Attorney General with an intent to sue. Asked if the matter will be heard on urgency, UDC’s Yandani Boko explained that initially, the intention was not to have the matter heard on urgency, but because of the Friday incident, they may have to reconsider.