POLITRICKING: DA’s Ashor Sarupen talks Liam Jacobs, Helen Zille and coalition chaos
Sarupen, who much like other DA members is still digesting the development and hopeful that Jacobs might make a U-turn on his decision to quit as a member of the country’s second largest political party.
Democratic Alliance (DA) deputy federal chairperson and campaign manager, Ashor Sarupen. Picture: EWN
JOHANNESBURG - Democratic Alliance (DA) deputy federal chairperson and campaign manager, Ashor Sarupen, has weighed in on the shock departure of the party’s former MP Liam Jacobs to the Patriotic Alliance (PA), calling it a “huge mistake” and warning the young MP will come to regret his decision.
“Liam [Jacobs] made a huge mistake… he’ll come to regret it,” said Sarupen.
Sarupen, who, much like other DA members, is still digesting the development and hopeful that Jacobs might make a U-turn on his decision to quit as a member of the country’s second largest political party.
Sarupen’s sentiments follow an incident, in what is often described as the witching hour, just after midnight and into Saturday morning, where PA president Gayton McKenzie hosted one of his popular Facebook lives, this being his social media tool of choice to make announcements to his followers and party supporters.
However, this time around, he wasn’t alone or joined by the usual PA faces. This time, he unveiled one of the DA’s youngest MPs, upcoming parliamentary star, Liam Jacobs, as his newest acquisition.
Just days ago, the pair had a tense face-off in Parliament, with McKenzie telling the 24-year-old he’s rude and represents a party with mass coloured support, yet it had appointed no coloured person to the national executive. Jacobs, from EWN’s understanding, didn’t even tender a formal resignation.
“I think that Liam will come in time, when he's older, to appreciate that the DA put a lot of faith and trust and development work into him Young Leaders Program, and he was on the federal executive and all sorts of things, and we really did try our best, and I do hope that he comes to his senses sooner rather than later,” said Sarupen.
The DA deputy federal chair said he’d seen lots of people leave his party, but trying to make their way back after 6,12, or at the most, 18 months in the PA.
"They come back. They want to come back and in different parts of the country we take them back and in different parts of the country we don’t," explained the politician.
Sarupen is also one of the DA’s bright lights, but beyond the party-political space, he also serves as one of the country’s youngest members of government, where he is one of two deputy ministers at the finance department.
The relatively low-profile politician was this week’s guest on Politricking, where he discussed having to wade through three different versions of the proposed budget statement, getting into government, one year into the GNU, economic growth, BEE, as well as the news that took many by surprise that 74-year-old Helen Zille had put her hand up to be considered by the party as its Joburg mayoral candidate ahead of next year’s local government elections.
"We’ve always run an open candidate selection process. Helen has put her hat into the ring, it doesn’t mean she’s selected. The moment Helen hinted, I took over the management of that process. She doesn’t know what questions we are going to ask, the assignment topics, nothing," he said.
Sarupen said the DA’s approach of casting the net wide when searching for leaders had its drawbacks, but insisted it was the better route than one taken by other organisations.
"You must be in the party for 10 years, you must have done this for five years, in exile for three years, be in the youth league, then the veterans league…" he trailed off.
He also denied the idea of Zille possibly becoming a mayoral candidate being an indictment on the party, or a suggestion that there’s no talent in the organisation.
"You can have a 74-year-old, you can have a 34-year-old, that is the point of what we call the open opportunity society," he said, pointing out that the youngest member of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s cabinet was 34-year-old Basic Education Minister Siviwe Gwarube.
"I think if you have talented people, you keep your talented people," he added.
While Zille feels like a controversial subject, Sarupen argued that if selected, she might be the best thing to happen to South Africa’s fast deteriorating economic hub.
"We can’t let this place fall apart, and so, for example, if Helen Zille is the best thing that we can get into Joburg, if she’s elected, let’s do it because she understands systems, so does Belinda, so do others," he said.
Sarupen, who seemed to have a plan to restore Joburg and other metros’ shine, said the first year had to be spent on financial recovery, with trading services being the next step and the roads and the likes following after.
And while there is an admission that the DA, which has taken turns at the wheel of all three of Gauteng’s big metros hasn’t had a perfect run, he believes it lost power at a time when there were signs of improvements, this as he blames DA coalition partners for some of the developments, including the removal of Randall Abrahams as Tshwane mayor.
"We made compromises for coalition politics," he admitted.
"Coalitions of corruption, one-seat extortionist parties exploiting the system, that’s how our coalitions fell apart, because we couldn’t give extortionist micro-parties what they wanted," he continued.
But he’s adamant that there were lessons from the GNU project, which should apply to local government, including allowing the party with the bigger share of the votes to call the shots and shape the kind of coalition government that will take over the reins.