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{
    "id": 126444,
    "url": "https://info.mzalendo.com/api/v0.1/hansard/entries/126444/?format=api",
    "text_counter": 479,
    "type": "other",
    "speaker_name": "",
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    "speaker": null,
    "content": "the matter has become the subject of litigation in a court of law. Indeed, as my learned predecessor, Speaker Kaparo, had occasion to say on 13th April 1995, inter alia :- “The effectiveness of the National Assembly will be seriously undermined if Members should pre-empt debate on matters before the House by resorting to Court.” If this House, as happened in the present case, begins to consider any matter before it is the subject of litigation, the House will not give up jurisdiction of the matter easily or at all, for the reason only that some litigation has subsequently commenced on the matter. To hold otherwise would be to invite every person who is apprehensive of the action that this House might take on any matter to rush to court and thereby gag the House from further deliberation on the matter. This surely cannot have been the intention of the rule. The Chair will guard carefully against the abuse of the procedures of this House in that manner. Hon. Members, from my pronouncements above, it has become clear that although the case to which the House has been referred by the honourable Minister for Justice, National Cohesion and Constitutional Affairs, may subsequently be shown to be active by production of evidence to that effect, this has not been done at this point in time. It has also become clear that the Chair is not persuaded by the argument that the deliberations of this House on this matter will cause the judicial officer or officers who have to determine any case to which the matter might relate to be unable to determine it fairly and will, therefore, prejudice its fair determination. I wish to conclude this Communication by reference to Standing Order 80(5) which vests, in the Speaker, a discretion to allow reference to any matter whether or not the matter would otherwise be sub judice. My determination on this question may have a bearing on the significance to be attached to my findings on whether there are active court proceedings and also on the question of the likelihood of prejudice. In this regard, let me at the outset emphasise that I hold the firm view that the discretion given to the Speaker should be exercised with the utmost caution and must not be resorted to except where exceptional circumstances so require. I am guided in determining whether to exercise my discretion in terms of the Standing Orders, by the words of Sir Fredrick Jordan, Chief Justice of the New South Wales, who in a 1937 case had the following to say:- “The case may be one in which as between competing matters of public interest the possibility of prejudice to a litigant may be required to yield to other and superior considerations. The discussion of public affairs and the denunciation of public abuses, actual or supposed, cannot be required to be suspended merely because the discussion or the denunciation may, as an incidental but not intended by-product, cause some likelihood of prejudice to a person who happens at the time to be a litigant.”"
}