CAPE TOWN – The UDM’s Mongameli Bobani remains in charge of the Nelson Mandela Bay municipality.
The Eastern Cape High Court has this morning dismissed Athol Trollip’s urgent application to overturn his ousting as the mayor.
Last month, council passed a motion of no confidence in Trollip.
He and the DA then took the matter to court.
Trollip says while they’re disappointed by the ruling, they respect the rule of law.
“We respect the rule of law, so we respect the judgment and go back to the benches of the opposition. We made three promises in the election; that we’d stop corruption, grow the economy and improve service delivery. We can still do two of those. We can still stop corruption by being in the benches of the opposition. We can improve service delivery from the opposition benches but grow the economy to create jobs is going to be impossible because we’ve seen that the ANC can’t do that.”
A key issue was whether DA councillor Mbulelo Manyati’s membership ceased after he abstained during a vote, which saw Speaker Jonathan Lawack also being kicked out in the motion.
The judge has ordered that Manyati was still a DA councillor until he resigned.
Trollip adds: “We were disappointed that the judgment was based on a technicality around the membership of councillor Manyati, who sold us out in a council meeting and crossed the floor sit in the benches of the ANC, and now the ruling says that he was still a member at that time. So we’ll have to look at our internal processes to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future as its clear that there are people who are up for sale.”
computer-arts.info
solars.biz