Landless People’s Movement (LPM) parliamentarians Bernadus Swartbooi and Henny Seibeb have asked the Supreme Court to interdict and restrain National Assembly speaker Peter Katjavivi from further interfering with their rights to attend sessions of the National Assembly or to make contributions during debates.
They also want the Supreme Court to declare Katjavivi’s decision to suspend them from attending National Assembly sessions unlawful and set it aside. The two filed an application in the Supreme Court to review the judgement by the High Court to dismiss the case in which they sued Katjavivi.
Swartbooi and Seibeb dragged Katjavivi to court last month for allegedly unprocedurally suspending them from attending National Assembly sessions for more than a day because of their alleged involvement in an incident that took place early last month during president Hage Geingob’s state of the nation address.
Acting High Court judge Kobus Miller dismissed their case, arguing that it could be competently dealt with through parliamentary processes.
Miller made this judgement considering the ongoing internal processes that were instituted by the parliamentary privileges committee, which meets today to deal with the matter. Seibeb will appear before this committee today to give evidence and answer questions regarding the events that transpired on 15 April in the National Assembly chambers.
Despite this outstanding process, the LPM leaders approached the Supreme Court to review Miller’s judgement and make further orders against Katjavivi.
In documents submitted to the Supreme Court last week, the two LPM leaders argued that Miller misdirected himself or made serious errors of law, especially when he limited himself to only two available remedies.
“The misdirection [arises] when he defines that he is not required to determine the consequences of the alleged acts of the applicants. Yet he finds it important that their alleged irrelevant conduct to the legality issue must first be investigated and finalised by parliament[ary] processes before the court determines the unlawfulness thereof,” the two MPs said.
They also argued that the acting judge misdirected himself after granting a cost order against them.