The African Transformation Movement (ATM) says they will engage with the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thandi Modise, to request that in the spirit of true democracy the vote of no confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa be done by a secret ballot.
The motion, brought by the ATM, is set to be ventilated in Parliament next Thursday. The ATM filed the motion earlier in the year before the country went into a nationwide lockdown over the coronavirus.
Party spokesperson S’busiso Mncwabe says they have garnered a lot of support from other parties and they have confidence their motion will pass.
“Immediately when we put the motion that time we started engaging our fellow opposition colleagues in the benches, in Parliament to make sure that we got the support. Even today as soon as we learnt that our motion has been put in the order paper for next week, we mandated the leader of the movement, the president of the ATM to start also going through the negotiations with our colleagues. What we want most is to strengthen our backing, we must go for a secret ballot. We might shock the nation come next week.”
The ATM is working to garner support for its motion of confidence in President Cyril Ramaphosa:
IFP may support the President
Meanwhile, the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) says it may support the President. The party says President Cyril Ramaphosa needs the support of opposition parties and the nation as he grapples with issues within the African National Congress (ANC), the coronavirus pandemic, allegations of corruption as well as steering the country to economic viability.
“The President and the executive have not performed to the optimum ability. There are a number of shortcomings, there are a number of cabinet ministers, which we feel are not pulling their weight but all in all our view is that President Ramaphosa has steered the ship to the best of his ability. He may have internal problems in his party but he needs to know and the country needs to know that he will have the support of people who would like to put the country first before corruption and any other misdemeanors, so we will consider our support or not but I would likely think that we would support the current president,” says IFP’s Narend Singh.
