By Staff Reporter
A legal scholar has savaged the report of the Independent Panel looking into the Phala Phala matter for “lacking the necessary quality and credibility”.
Writing in the Daily Maverick, Richard Calland, associate professor in public law at UCT, says it would be unjust and set an “inappropriate precedent” for President Cyril Ramaphosa to leave office on the basis of such a bad report.
Calland writes that Parliament put in place carefully worded rules to establish “a preliminary investigation by an independent panel of three fit and proper people to decide if there is sufficient evidence of a serious violation of the law by the president and/or serious misconduct”.
He says that while the report essentially admitted that the panel had no power to test the truth of the evidence or to make firm findings against the president, “that is precisely what the panel then proceeded to do – to make very serious findings against the president, on the basis of limited, untested and largely hearsay evidence”.
Calland points out that the National Assembly alone has the power to make a finding on the merits.
He says that if the president were to be removed on the basis of this report, it would create a “completely untenable and destabilising situation” where a president would have to resign whenever there are initial allegations against him or her.
“It would create a precedent that is completely unworkable and would bring instability to the governance of the country, undermining the constitutional scheme created to hold the president to account.”
Calland points out that to remove a sitting president is a drastic step for any democracy that should be “on the sturdiest of footings so as to ensure maximum legitimacy in the constitutional process and so as to not risk undermining public confidence in the democracy”.
Calland’s case has been backed up by other scholars.
Jonathan Jansen, the educationist who was the first black rector of the University of the Free State, used fewer words to get to the point: “If a trio of honours students had written the Phala Phala report I would have failed all three and barred them from further access to higher education.”
