Staff Reporter
THE United People’s Movement (UPM) has penned a letter to the Speaker of the National Assembly, claiming that the request made by the Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) to have its president, Jan van Wyk, and Frans Joseph Bertolini withdraw from parliament is unconstitutional and violates the agreement signed between the two parties.
In a statement released yesterday, PDM wrote to the Speaker of the National Assembly seeking the withdrawal of the two parliamentarians, who are members of the United People’s Movement (UPM) that formed an alliance with the PDM during the 2019 general elections. The PDM is now fighting to break this alliance and have the two UPM members removed, who were sworn in as members of parliament under the PDM ticket. This is allegedly because of UPM’s new alliance with the National Empowerment Fighting Corruption (NEFC), publicly announced on the 27th of February 2024. Through the UPM and NEFC Alliance, the parties agreed not to field a candidate for the upcoming Presidential Elections, concluding that the Alliance would support Madam Ally Angula for the 2024 Presidential Elections.
In response to this, UPM acting secretary general, Francis Huish has written a letter to the Speaker of the National Assembly claiming that the PDM is in violation of the signed MOU of 28 August 2019.
“There is no agreement in place which indicates that the UPM will support the PDM for Presidential and National Assembly elections 2024/25. The MOU was signed specifically for the 2019/2020 elections. The MOU exists to show UPM supported and went into an alliance with PDM specifically for the elections of 2019/2020 and not to field a Presidential candidate for that same election, and we as a party adhered to that agreement. Further stipulations laid out for the cooperation in the MOU for the 2020 Regional and Local Authority Election were also indicated. No further amendment or agreement was made to support PDM for the 2024/25 elections,” Huish stated.
He added that the PDM is out of order and their request to withdraw the honourable members would imply that in no way did UPM contribute to the success of the 2019/2020 elections, although the parties were in an alliance showing their support, canvassing members and mobilizing voters for the alliance.
“The PDM did not become the official opposition on their own and it was also the contribution of the UPM and its members that made it possible to become the official opposition. By extension, the PDM is not on its own in the National Assembly as the MOU is clear on its being a joint party list submitted to the ECN. As it were, if the members feel it fine to withdraw the honourable members then all the current members of parliament under the PDM/UPM Alliance should be withdrawn,” Huish said.
He concluded that the as per the MOU section 1.3.1.6 any vacancy that may occur in the said safe seats allocated to the UPM will still have to be filled by UPM members, since the seats are designated to the UPM. Section 1.3.1.4 also alludes to the allocation of funding and the paying over of money quote “being paid over to the UPM for their seats after the 2019 NA Elections”. This indicates that the UPM is still after the 2019 NA elections to receive its funding for its seats occupied by its members in Parliament.
“It is against this background that the UPM requests that the Office of the Speaker to ignore this misleading request. The UPM will be taking legal action against the PDM who is in clear violation of the signed MOU,” Huish stressed.
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