Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen says a key objective of the party’s approach to coalitions is to ‘avoid extending the lives of corrupt organisations and extending their time in government when the voters have clearly spoken and rejected them’.
In a video on the DA’s platform, Steenhuisen also insisted that the DA would not be party to ‘unstable coalitions’, and would rather remain in opposition where such instability was likely, and gave an assurance that coalition negotiations came with non-negotiable principles.
‘Today, we are going to be forming governments, finalising coalition offers to some of the other parties and starting to move forward.’
The party was ‘looking for stability, strong majorities where we can really get things done for you and your community’.
He added: ‘I want to give you the absolute assurance that we are going into these negotiations with non-negotiable principles … Principles that speak to transparency, accountability, service delivery, ensuring that we can bring economic development and job creation to your municipality and making sure of accountable administrations spending the money on you and not the politicians. These are the things that we are going into negotiations with.’
The party’s federal executive met yesterday ‘to discuss various negotiations we’ve been entering into with other parties’.
Steenhuisen dismissed speculation in the Sunday newspapers – referring to talks with the ANC and ActionSA – as ‘a lot of misinformation and disinformation’.
‘We are not going to be rushing into things. If we cannot form a coalition, I undertake to you that we will go and be the very best opposition that we possibly can be,’ he said.
[Image: Democratic Alliance, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96850673]