The Minister of Cooperative Governance must act with urgency to introduce a set of regulations to stabalise coalition governments.

This is the call from the Good Party after another tumultuous week in the Tshwane Municipality.

The EFF and ANC had put up COPE’s Murunwa Makwarela as their mayoral candidate to ensure that the DA does not reclaim the municipality.

But it has subsequently emerged that Makwarela had submitted a fake certificate claiming that he is a rehabilitated insolvent.

Political commentator, Ebrahim Fakir says that it is the responsibility of every party to do the checks to ensure that candidates are fit to hold office.

It’s clear that this was not the case with Makwarela.

It was only when City Manager, Johan Mettler, had flagged the irregularity to the Independent Electoral Commission, that action was taken.

Fakir says that this shows the true role that bureaucrats should be playing in government, which ultimately works to ensure transparency and prevents dubious characters from holding office.

Meanwhile the Good Party’s Secretary-General, Brett Herron, says that the regulations needed under the Municipal Systems Act must “disincentivise day-to-day political horse-trading between elections, put a stop to the practice of electing so-called placeholder mayors while parties haggle over their next moves, and create systems to vet those elected to executive office and ensure they are qualified to be public representatives”.