By Amy Musgrave
The African National Congress maintains that there is no need to set up an oversight portfolio committee for the Presidency.
Earlier this week, political parties welcomed the establishment of the committee, which was not supported by the ANC and the Inkatha Freedom Party, saying that it would strengthen Parliament’s mechanism to hold the executive accountable, particularly the president.
However, the ANC said on Sunday that it still believed that no argument had been advanced to date by any of the opposition parties setting out what weaknesses existed in the current arrangement.
Neither had a constructive solution been proposed on how to strengthen the existing mechanism, should the current committees have been found to be ineffective, ANC chief whip Mdumiseni Ntuli said in a statement.
“The ANC further holds as its considered view that this decision to establish yet another Portfolio Committee on the Presidency being advanced by the Democratic Alliance and its allies the MK Party, the EFF and others, is yet again nothing but political posturing and point scoring,” he said.
Ntuli said that all functions within the broader Presidency were already accountable through the delegated principals and the properly appointed executive authorities to various oversight committees.
These included the planning, monitoring and evaluation, communications and digital technologies, intelligence, women, youth and persons with disabilities, and the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.
Also, the rules of Parliament prescribed that the president must appear at least four times a year before the National Assembly, and twice before the National Council of Provinces to respond to questions for oral reply.
He said the president further responded to an unlimited number of questions for written reply from MPs, must table a budget once a year before the National Assembly, and attend a debate on the budget vote.
The DA, which led the proposals, said on Thursday that the Presidency’s director-general was currently the only DG that did not have to answer to a Parliamentary committee, asserting that this presented a significant gap in accountability.
“These new rules will ensure that the president and the Department of the Presidency is accountable in full, and not only through occasional oral questions and functions delegated to other members of the executive,” DA chief whip George Michalakis said in a statement.
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