EDITORIAL: The ball is back in Baleka Mbete’s court on secret ballot
It is likely Jacob Zuma will survive his eighth no-confidence vote
The Constitutional Court’s finding on the secret ballot issue is one of those decisions that could be construed as a victory for the United Democratic Movement (UDM) and other opposition parties, or for the ANC. And both have won, but the question now concerns the consequences. The sequence of events was that the UDM asked for a secret ballot in the vote of no confidence in President Jacob Zuma. Parliamentary Speaker Baleka Mbete replied that she had no power to make such a decision. The court found that, in fact, she did. So the finding is a victory for the UDM in a technical sense, but what the UDM and the opposition parties really wanted — and what they asked for in the alternative — is a ruling that would have forced the ANC to hold a secret ballot. The hope was that this would facilitate a sufficient number of ANC MPs to vote with the opposition to remove the president. But the court did not go that far, which could be construed as a victory for the ANC. The only problem is tha...
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