Cape Town - THE African National Congress (ANC) came under fire from opposition parties yesterday after it was suggested that the party's former chief whip Tony Yengeni would face nothing more than a reprimand for having misled Parliament about a discount he received on a luxury car.

Yengeni proclaimed his innocence to the National Assembly about the discounted MercedesBenz and was recently convicted of fraud in a plea agreement with the state for having lied to the house. He is yet to be sentenced.

A draft resolution on Yengeni was discussed at yesterday's meeting of Parliament's programme committee. It states: "The house pronounces its strongest disapproval of the honourable Yengeni's conduct, and censures him accordingly".

National Assembly speaker Frene Ginwala told the committee that Parliament's legal adviser would have to study the resolution to ensure it did not infringe the rules. Parliament's rules did not provide for sanctions against MPs, she said.

But Douglas Gibson, chief whip of the opposition Democratic Alliance, said that if Yengeni remained an MP it would be because the ANC wanted this and not because the laws and rules did not provide for sanctions.

The DA position was that Yengeni should resign from Parliament and that if he failed to do so the ANC should remove him. SA's electoral system of proportional representation based on party lists meant that the power to control MPs was in the hands of party bosses. "The ANC could remove him immediately" if it wanted to.

"If he survives in Parliament, then that is because the ANC want him there," Gibson said.

New National Party MP Dirk Bakker said his party also believed Yengeni should be fired. "We cannot have MPs defrauding and misleading Parliament."

Bakker said he appreciated that there were problems with the rules, but that these needed to be addressed urgently to allow for expulsion.

With acknowledgements to Wyndham Hartley, Sapa and Business Day.