Publication: Post Issued: Date: 2005-11-16 Reporter: Bhan Mahabir

Mbeki Could Resign to Remove Impasse 

 

Publication 

Post

Date

2005-11-16

Reporter

 Bhan Mahabir

Web Link

 www.thepost.co.za

 

Plea bargains are the current rage and very tempting offers can be made from the national treasury with flagrant disregard for taxpayers' sentiments.

The basic requirement of a plea bargain is that the accused must plead guilty as charged in the first instance.

Thereafter, in Jacob Zuma's case, (as speculated in the media), Zuma will be given a non-custodial sentence of less than one year.

The sentence being less than one year's duration would not affect his eligibility to hold public office even up to the presidency, should the opportunity present itself after the usual democratic procedures.

It is not beyond the State to offer a fabulously lucrative exit package, as it did to the senior NIA officials who were suspended, arbitrarily it would seem. The treasury is awash with loot squeezed from taxpayers.

And there is nothing to restrain Big Brother from washing his hands clean with our hard-earned money.
"The likelihood of a plea bargain being accepted is nil," Zuma's defence attorney, Michael Hulley, announced categorically.

Part of the process of plea bargaining involves the accused person acknowledging guilt - in essence a guilty plea.
 
Zuma will not plead guilty when he believes he is not guilty. In any event this would be a tender trap, an instrument for harassment for the rest of his political life and even beyond.

A sublime alternative to resolve this impasse would be for the pipe-smoking president, philosopher-doyen of high principles that he would like himself to be known as, to resign and re-schedule a general election to coincide with the upcoming local government elections.

Like any honourable visionary, (Thabo) Mbeki would want his historical legacy to be that of a paragon of rectitude, who did not hesitate to fire his comrade-in-arms of 30 years - and did not hesitate to relinquish his presidency to save the ANC from disintegrating and the country from falling into disarray.

The presidency of the AU parliament beckons and it would provide unlimited scope for Mbeki to pursue his visions of an African Renaissance and incorruptibility in all its forms.

Aluta Continua, and the people of SA, the good and the indifferent altogether, will send him off with blessings he will most definitely *2 need in pursuit of his messianic Utopian ideals.

Bhan Mahabir *3
La Lucia

With acknowledgements to Bhan Mahabir and Post.


*1  And leave the playing fields back home wide open to predatory opportunism - me thinks not.

*2  One of Zuma's La Lucia supporters. There are a few.