DEMOCRACY can be very uncomfortable for those used to ruling the roost when there is another cock with a more powerful crow in the barn.

Yesterday the barn in question was Parliament's Good Hope chamber, where the standing committee on public accounts was meeting. The new African National Congress (ANC) team, led by deputy chief whip Geoff Doidge who is certainly one who knows the pleasures of laying down the law squirmed and bristled with discomfort at having their recommendations politely but firmly put down by steel-willed committee chairman Gavin Woods.

Doidge must have felt like the dog owner whose orders are blithely disregarded by his pack, which friskily runs off in all directions but the chosen one, to chase cats, encounter strangers and smell about.

Parliament had the wisdom to include in its rulings the stipulation that the chairman of the watchdog committee, which performs a crucial oversight role on the expenditure of public funds by government departments, be a member of an opposition party.

How wise this is was demonstrated yesterday when ANC members tried en masse to engineer the committee's proceedings in a particular way. Several attempts were made to question and undermine Woods's role as chairman. Despite their being the majority, and short of intensifying the conflict by demanding that matters be put to a vote, Woods had the power to rule them down.

Ever since the former leader of the ANC on the committee, Andrew Feinstein, was replaced by Doidge, and the committee packed with ANC party loyalists in a bid to steer the arms probe in the direction least embarrassing for the executive, it has been instructive to witness the ANC's attempts to take over proceedings and lay down the law.

Doidge made his strong presence felt at his first appearance on the committee, and let Woods know in no uncertain terms that his decisions on the method of work and the proceedings of the committee would not be left unchallenged.

The ANC members might well argue that they have as much right to express their views and to try to shape proceedings as opposition party members. And, of course, they do.

What is noticeable, however, is the sharp change of tone in the traditionally nonpartisan manner of operation of the committee since the reconfiguring of the ANC's team. Everything is very patently caucused beforehand and the party line laid down. Individuality has gone, and those who disagree keep silent. This includes those who were very vocal when the committee operated in a more harmonious, friendly manner.

The committee is now noticeably fractured on party lines. In the past, individual expressions of opinion were commonplace.

Previously, the culture was to seek consensus. Woods was allowed to perform his functions as chairman without interference, other than when members of the majority party had important technical, procedural points to raise about making the committee run more effectively.

Now it is clear that the ANC is champing at the bit to take over with nit-picking challenges to the chairman designed to show who's boss.

Feinstein, who worked closely and amicably with Woods while leader of the ANC study group, has assumed an uncharacteristic silence. Not a person lacking in ideas or shy to express them, one can only assume he is lying low to make his contribution to committee work in less openly contentious arenas.

Among the actors in yesterday's performance, played out before a chamber hall packed with journalists and interested members of the public, was Terence Nombembe, deputy auditor-general, who reported to the committee on the progress of the investigation into alleged irregularities surrounding the arms probe.

ANC members, whose leaders in the cabinet have shown less than full respect for the office of the auditorgeneral, were overweening in their concern for propriety, especially over what Nombembe should or should not be questioned about. Among these ANC members was Andries Nel.

Nel is famed for the alacrity with which he has carried out the work of his ad hoc committee. Its job is to find a proper remedy following the findings of the public protector on Justice Minister Penuell Maduna's improper remarks about former auditor-general Henri Kluever. A year later and Parliament hasn't had a whiff of the ad hoc committee's report or when it will next meet.

The ANC members were yesterday anxious to define the boundaries of the discussion and cut off the debate, which was veering dangerously towards the dreaded Willem Heath a subject always popping up unawares. They bombarded the committee with persuasive intellectual arguments to try to get their way.

Woods, seated at a podium between ANC and opposition teams, was unmoved and proceeded as he saw fit. How annoying. United Democratic Movement leader Bantu Holomisa was there to watch the show, as was the feisty Pan Africanist Congress MP Patricia de Lille, who got the whole arms investigation on the road by making allegations of corruption in Parliament.

Well, even if the ANC members didn't enjoy the drama of it all, there were others, normally the parliamentary small fry, who presumably enjoyed wielding the whip for once.  

With acknowledgement to Linda Ensor and Business Day.