Council meeting cancelled
2009-02-19
Sieb Sieberhagen
WHAT should have been a smooth take-over by the DA coalition at a special council meeting at the Wellington Town Hall on Tuesday, became an impasse due to infighting among the coalition parties. The special meeting to table a motion of no confidence in the ANC office bearers was cancelled minutes before it was due to start. Speaker Sikhumbuzo Mgajo (ANC) told the 30 councillors of the ANC and NPP and the public gathered in the Wellington Town Hall that he had received a request from the DA that the meeting be suspended. According to a DA spokesperson, the party required time to study the sustainability of the coalition. The tenuous opposition coalition (DA, ID, ACDP, Freedom Front and WCC) requires the support of all their councillors as well as independent councillor Spasie Kika to gain the majority (a total of 31). The absence of the opposition parties from the meeting is thought to be linked to a lack of agreement on posts in the mayoral committee. More negotiations are expected to take place this week to ensure sufficient support for the motion, for which seven days’ notice is required. * The meeting was preceded by considerable drama on Tuesday. A late interdict at the Cape High Court by a faction of the WCC claiming that the two WCC members in the Drakenstein council, Dawn Jacobs and Eleanore Basson, were no longer supported by their party, was heard less than two hours before the meeting. The application was dismissed with costs, upholding a previous verdict that the legitimate leader of the party is Norman Steyn (who supports Jacobs and Basson as councillors). The unsuccessful application cost the applicants (a faction of the WCC supporting the ANC) in the region of R20 000 in legal costs. Although Mgajo assured the Paarl Post that the ANC had had nothing to do with the court action, councillors remarked on the fact that the notice of the application had been delivered to them on Monday evening by municipal employees.
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