Politics
A brief look: Cosatu calls for independent investigation into DA
It isn’t enough that Western Cape premier Helen Zille has asked for the auditor general to investigate the tender that saw the DA come under a cloud of controversy over the weekend, said Western Cape Cosatu secretary general Tony Ehrenreich. He is demanding an independent investigation, that of the Public Protector. By SIPHO HLONGWANE.
Despite Helen Zille’s promise that she would be asking the director-general of the Western Cape government to put the auditor-general on the case of the communications tender awarded to TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris last year (and her tweeted promise to resign if they that there was corruption), the Cosatu secretary in the Western Cape, Tony Ehrenreich, said that the Public Protector also needs to investigate the way that the tender was awarded.
“We need an independent investigation,” he told the Daily Maverick. He said that Zille’s promise for an investigation was the provincial government investigating itself. He went on to say that he had a completely different view to the Western Cape premier of the tender process. “They haven’t followed the correct procedures in awarding that tender.”
Ehrenreich said that he would call for an investigation into any individual or party that abused public funds.
He also reportedly said that there was tender corruption and collusion between certain companies and the DA.
The DA-led Western Cape government was accused on Sunday by the Sunday Times of flouting regulations in awarding what it called a potential R1 billion communications tender. Zille’s office came out with a strong rebuttal later on, saying that though there would be an investigation, they were happy that the process had been clean. DM
Read more:
Public Protector ‘must probe’ Zille, in TimesLive
Analysis: DA vs Sunday Times – who stuffed up? in Daily Maverick
Photo: Tony Ehrenreich, from Book LIVE’s photostream on Flickr.