Madonsela files opposing papers

[LazyLion]

Public Protector Thuli Madonsela has filed papers opposing an urgent application to prevent her from releasing the provisional report into President Jacob Zuma's Nkandla homestead, her office said on Wednesday.

It said the papers were filed on Tuesday afternoon at the High Court in Pretoria.

"[This was in]... response to an application filed last Friday by organs of state within the security cluster."

The security cluster of ministries sought to interdict Madonsela from releasing her provisional report to affected, implicated, and interested parties for comment.

Madonsela's provisional report was given to the cluster on November 1.

This followed a special request that it have access to the report ahead of all other parties to establish if its contents would compromise Zuma's security. The return date for comment was November 6.

The cluster filed an urgent application on Friday to prevent Madonsela from releasing the report. The High Court in Pretoria postponed the matter to the end of this week.

Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa said in a founding affidavit that Zuma's safety would be compromised if Madonsela released the provisional report without state comment.

He said that the cluster, through Public Works Minister Thulas Nxesi, sent a request to Madonsela last Monday for an extension of the deadline to submit their comment.

"The reason for the request was that the provisional report is voluminous... 357 pages," he said.

Justice Minister Jeff Radebe echoed Mthethwa's comments at a briefing on Saturday.

Radebe said Madonsela was unreasonable in setting a November 6 deadline for the ministers to comment, as the 357 page report was only submitted to them on November 1, leaving ministers too little time to provide input.

"The public protector has, in our view, unreasonably denied us the opportunity to properly engage the report..." he said.

Madonsela's office said on Monday that she was unwilling to leave her report in the hands of government security departments for too long.

For this reason she declined their request for more than five days to study the document, it said in a statement.


Source : Sapa /aa/tk/jje/jk
Date : 13 Nov 2013 09:18

 

[House]

Radebe said Madonsela was unreasonable in setting a November 6 deadline for the ministers to comment, as the 357 page report was only submitted to them on November 1, leaving ministers too little time to provide input.

This is utter ANC corrupt bull*****!

5 days is way more than enough time to go through the report with a team of your staff and comment on it. Unless, (and I probably did not think about this) if Radebe is also uneducated and cannot read himself. But this is also not an excuse as he can get someone to read it for him then.

What happened here is that she ruled against the government and they are not happy with it. They are busy trying to persuade her to change her opinion and findings. They still need to get to threatening her and that it why they do not have enough time.

 

[blunomore]

Radebe said Madonsela was unreasonable in setting a November 6 deadline for the ministers to comment, as the 357 page report was only submitted to them on November 1, leaving ministers too little time to provide input.

As House said, this is nonsense.

A proper functioning Department will have assistants able to peruse the report, analyse it and even draft an executive summary for the Ministers who are too lazy to read.

Madonsela's office said on Monday that she was unwilling to leave her report in the hands of government security departments for too long.

I wonder why?

 

[Paul Hjul]

I disagree with the approach that 5 days in itself is an adequate period of time for a "functioning department" to respond to a report of this nature.

If the Public Protector were to have a 1780 page report concerning an investigation involving education delivered to the national department it would be in my view perfectly reasonable within 5 days for the Director-General to reply with a request for X period of time to allow for inputs to be received and processed by PQR for reason XYZ etc ... 5 days is enough time to read a report and to formulate a preliminary position and to decide what the nature of the response will be and who will respond - but it isn't enough time to get the information from 9 provincial MECs offices and so on. The point though is that what is being sought is not more time to fully respond to a report but more time before the public has sight of the report and more importantly they are not providing a timeline a needs assessment -- Radebe is not about to say how long he needs - 1 week, 2 weeks, a month

Moreover (and in my mind here is the rub) the claim that is being made is that the matter has security threat implications and that is frankly a whole nother ball game. National security must be expected to identify and assess threats quickly and effectively. Assuming that there is something which compromises the presidents security then a sitting report which may or may not find parts of itself being leaked as government departments scurry about to scrupper the report is the most irresponsible thing to do. The security cluster needs to be able to act and remedy any threat long before a dozen administrators in the DoJ are reading the report. This is not a unique issue though, other countries have information which could pose a threat to the head of states security being released all the time but the Windsors simply have to change their schedule and their routine every now and then and the Duke of York may have the occasional amusing stop by the police to ask what he is doing on a protected property.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Oh dear, I hope she won't get a contract on her life... we need people like her with the guts to stand up to the oinkers.