The North West Provincial Government has in a media statement issued on Tuesday dismissed Democratic Alliance Provincial Leader and Member of the North West Provincial Legislature, Chris Hattingh’s incoherent criticism of Premier Mme Thandi Modise’s pronouncements made during the State of the Province Address delivered last Friday as “typical tantrums and theatrics from familiar quarters.”
During interviews which were widely broadcast by the SABC throughout the weekend and carried by The New Age of Monday 20 February 2012, Mr. Hattingh chose to call for the Premier’s resignation from her elected leadership position in the ruling party instead of engaging with the bold infrastructure development and programmes to deliver basic infrastructure and support job creation that she had announced.
Though Premier Mme Thandi Modise does not expect Hattingh to understand and or support the selfless contributions that leaders in the ruling party like herself have to make, she nonetheless expects him as part of the opposition to play an oversight role to ensure that the actions of government are in the best interest of the people and not to overstretch his mandate to prescribing leadership to the ruling party.
While his criticism might have been leveled at Premier Modise, Hattingh might have been canvassing that national leaders should not be deployed as Premiers to resolve unknown party-related challenges in the Western Cape.
It remains to be heared whether the fork-tongued Hattingh would during the State of the Province Address Debate on Tuesday concur with the Premier that the challenges facing communities in the North West are high unemployment rate, poverty, deepening inequality, rural marginalisation, corruption and racism and whether he has alternative policy proposals from the ones adopted by government to deal with them.
The majority of citizens in our province understand fully the challenges that are facing the provincial government and appreciate the opportunity costs that have had to be made and strides that have been made under the leadership of Premier Modise to stabilise the provincial administration, uproot corruption, establish and sustain clean governance.
Enquiries:
Lesiba Moses Kgwele
Tel: 018 391 0420
Cell: 083 629 1987
Fax: 018 381 0328
Email: LKgwele@nwpg.gov.za
North West DA leader Hattingh’s SOPA criticism “incoherent, typical tantrums and theatrics from familiar quarters”
Province
