GOOD won’t enter into any coalitions, wants to oppose ‘decaying old parties’

With the country’s big parties jostling to form coalitions in 66 hung municipal councils, the GOOD party says it has decided not to enter into any local government coalitions.

The relatively new party, led by veteran politician Patricia de Lille, contested its first local government elections this year in 45 municipalities in five provinces.

The party garnered 0.64% of votes nationally and got 45 council seats at various municipalities in four provinces. This included 12 municipalities where no political party achieved an outright majority to govern.

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GOOD on Sunday said its national management committee (NMC) considered several approaches to form coalitions with other parties in these municipalities.

However, the party decided that the best way to serve their supporters would be as a constructive opposition.

“Our objective is to persuade more voters to support our fight for spatial, social, economic and environmental justice.

“We want to continue to grow and to continue to challenge the decaying old parties who have betrayed those they have been elected to serve,” GOOD said in a statement.

To ensure that they remain a constructive opposition party in various municipalities, the party said it had established a local government desk to support its councillors in the performance of their duties, and prepared a comprehensive training programme on local government legislation.

GOOD also developed a performance management system to hold its councillors accountable, and said they would complete a declaration of interests to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest between their private interests and their public duties.

“GOOD is one of a handful of newer political parties, arrogantly dismissed by some as non-entities, which combined to give both the ANC and the DA bloody noses in the local government elections – including in the City of Cape Town where the DA majority was slashed by 8%.

“We have demonstrated that the support we received was not wasted and we will work hard and constructively to earn every single vote we received.”

Compiled by Thapelo Lekabe

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