By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
Public Protector Busisiwe Mkhwebane’s lawyer, advocate Dali Mpofu tore into Parliament on Wednesday for its decision to proceed with their inquiry into her fitness to hold office.
Mpofu made submissions during Mkhwebane’s interdict hearing at the Western Cape High Court.
The Public Protector is seeking to halt Parliament’s impeachment process against her.
Mkhwebane’s application was postponed in the high court last month after counsel for Parliament revealed an incident where self-described legal analyst Ismail Abramjee sent an SMS to Parliament’s counsel, advocate Andrew Breitenbach SC, saying that the public protector would lose the application.
The Constitutional Court delivered the judgment a week later and threw out the rescission application by Mkhwebane.
During Wednesday’s proceedings, Mpofu criticised the Ad Hoc Committee on the Section 194 Inquiry for forging ahead with the impeachment process despite knowing that Mkhwebane’s interdict application was yet to be heard.
“The Public Protector is only saying ‘please court all these people are descending upon me, including the [Ismail] Abramjee’s on this world’, “he said.
Last week, the committee resolved to proceed with the impeachment process after Parliament’s legal services informed MPs that there was no legal action preventing them from continuing with their work.
Mpofu questioned whether the process has indeed started given that the Constitutional Court ruled in February that Mkhwebane was allowed to be legally represented during the impeachment proceedings.
“That judgment said when the process starts you must have full legal representation. The only reason that we have not been invited to the meetings of the committee is because they know the proceedings have not started.
“Otherwise they would have invited us because full legal representation is legal representation, one does not need to be a genius for this,” he said.
Mpofu expanded on his analogy further: “If you say I have legal representation rights in the CCMA, then how can the CCMA proceed and do all sorts of things without me or my lawyer?
“These people are trying to fool this court, because they cannot have it both ways. If they genuinely believed that the process has started then they would have had the lawyers there.”
Mpofu also defended the Public Protector’s latest application to reverse the rescission judgment against her.
He told the court that Mkhwebane’s interdict hearing should be suspended “where there is a possibility” that a ruling may be reversed in light of the second rescission application.
Mpofu said the SMS was “the biggest scandal to ever hit our courts”.
He argued that the mere fact that the judgment was delayed by a week, “cannot by any stretch of the imagination be read to mean that what Abramjee was saying was not going to happen on the 29th if it had not been outed”.
He told the judges what should concern them was the possibility that someone in the Concourt leaked a judgment to influence them.
The matter is continuing and on Thursday has also been set aside for the Western Cape High Court judges for the case.
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