Johnathan Paoli
THE Western Cape High court has dismissed on Tuesday the urgent application by the EFF to suspend the new parliamentary joint rules, which are to come into effect at the State of the Nation address on Thursday.
The recent change in the rules makes it a violation to disrupt the president’s speech through points of order and specifically bans any form of what it terms “grossly disorderly conduct”.
The EFF’s legal team argued that the rules affected their right to free speech and right to protest enshrined in the Constitution.
In its judgement the court held that the EFF failed to provide any evidence to substantiate their claim that the amended rules were only adopted as a means to “target” them as all other political parties would be subjected to the impugned rules.
Judge Deidre Kusevitsky said that the Red Berets failed to satisfy the requirements for the relief sought and added that she saw no correlation between the adoption of the amended rules and a perceived ulterior political motive.
In its submission to the court, Parliament admitted that the rules had to be amended on several occasions due to the unprecedented deviations from established practice since 2014 and said that the EFF has, since the 2015 SONA, attempted with premeditation to collapse Sona and prevent the president from making an address.
Parliament argued that the Sona was ceremonial and not a debate, not an engagement and that the EFF could not claim that their freedom of speech was stifled by the adoption of the joint rules.
The Court emphasised the importance of respecting the doctrine of the separation of powers for all arms of the state and said that there existed no exceptional circumstances for it to breach the separation of powers doctrine and reaffirmed parliament’s right to regulate its own procedures and processes.
Kusevitsky said the EFF did not make a successful case orally for a suspension of the rules and the application was dismissed with costs.
In a related case, concerning the attendance of the party’s top management at the Sona ceremony, the WC High court postponed its judgement to Thursday before 10 in the morning.
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