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Public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane.
- The Western Cape High Court rejected Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s request to halt the impeachment proceedings of Parliament.
- Mkhwebane did not meet the requirements for such an order, the court ruled.
- The Public Protector must pay the legal costs of the speaker and the district attorney, but no punitive cost order was granted against Mkhwebane.
The request of the public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane to stop the expulsion proceedings from Parliament against him was dismissed with costs in the Western Cape High Court on Friday.
The court battle began in February, after Mkhwebane submitted an urgent request for an injunction to stop the process to remove her from office.
The process was initially set in motion by the approval of a motion of the DA by the president of the National Assembly Thandi Modise. This, after the National Assembly approved the rules for said process, also called impeachment, in December.
Judge Vincent Saldanha ruled that there would be “serious damage to the public interest, together with the separation of powers, damage to the National Assembly if the process is not carried out.”
Saldanha said the relief Mkhwebane was seeking would not only affect his position, but would prevent the National Assembly from holding other heads of Chapter 9 institutions accountable.
READ | DA has ‘vendetta’ against public protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane, accuses her legal adviser
“The applicant (Mkhwebane), in my opinion, did not meet any of the requirements for provisional relief,” the Saldanha ruling reads.
“Even if she had, I would have exercised my discretion in rejecting such relief, given the seriousness of the charges that had been preferred against her and which have been based on scathing findings of no one higher than the Constitutional Court regarding her. . conduct, honesty and research methodology. “
Furthermore, Saldanha said that the decision to initiate a process to impeach the director of a Chapter 9 institution was not taken lightly and was a “serious accountability mechanism.”
“A court should not lightly interfere with such processes unless the applicant has demonstrated exceptional circumstances which, in my opinion, the applicant has not complied with.”
Justices Monde Samela and Elize Meyer agreed.
Saldanha ordered the Public Protector to pay the legal bill for Modise and the prosecutor. He did not agree to the district attorney’s request for a punitive cost order against Mkhwebane.
This sentence is only Part A of Mkhwebane’s application. In Part B, he asks the court to declare unconstitutional and invalid the National Assembly rules for removal of a Chapter 9 head.
Saldanha said that in the court documents, Mkhwebane “did not present a clear and strong case” for the relief requested in Part B. He said that he was therefore satisfied that it was “fair and equitable” not to stop the process. of Parliament.
Part B will be heard in November.
On Thursday, the National Assembly Programming Committee heard that it could continue with the removal process, pending the ruling, unless the court orders not to do so.
Modise is in the process of appointing an independent three-person panel to determine whether there is a prima facie case for Mkhwebane’s impeachment.
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