DA boycotts Middle East debate

By Tando Mfengwana
06 May 2007

The Democratic Alliance walked out of a Provincial Legislature meeting in protest of the debate about the 40th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

“It’s the DA’s opinion that it is not the authority and framework for this legislature to debate matters of international importance,’ says the DA’s Theuns Botha.

He says that they believe that this is with the authority of the national parliament and therefore they decided not to take part in the debate.

Botha added that there many other paginate and very important matters in the province that, "need to be debated very urgently and which is in the legislatures ambit and in our jurisdiction to do and therefore we protested against this debate".

The African National Congress has condemned this and says the action undermines democracy.

"We don’t agree with that, we think that there are many people in the Western Cape not only Muslim people but people of all religious persuasions and back ground who care very deeply about issues of Palestine," says the ANC’s Garth Strachan.

Strachan says that all other parties in the legislature continue to have that debate.

"We think that a matter to do with Palestine and the occupation of Palestine by Israel is something that should concern us all and as the ANC this is part and parcel of a process where we want to place these issues in the public domain," he said.

Strachan added that all the MP’s of the National assembly will be holding a picket demonstration of Friday and will be marching on Saturday.