The Democratic Alliance (DA) on Tuesday walked out of a special committee of the Western Cape legislature in a bid to block the appointment of an ANC member to a key post in the province.

The committee was supposed to interview short-listed candidates for the post of public service commissioner for the province, including MPL Kobus Brynard, who defected from the DA to the ANC last year.

However DA provincial leader Theuns Botha withdrew, leaving the committee temporarily short of a quorum and unable to proceed.

He said he did this because the ANC was abusing the process in order to appoint Brynard, "one of its cronies", to the position.

This, he said, was "despite compelling legal opinion... that Mr Brynard's candidature constitutes a clear conflict of interest".

Botha said Brynard had been a member of the committee from the date of its establishment on 4 December last year, until 2 March this year.

Brynard had applied for the commissioner's position on 23 February 2009, at a time when he was still a member of the committee, Botha said.

"He was also a party to the decision taken on 11 December 2008 not to appoint a Commissioner on the first round of applications, but to readvertise the position."

Botha said if the committee did appoint Brynard, the DA would take the decision to the high court for review.

Committee chairperson Kent Morkel confirmed that Botha's departure had left the committee temporarily without a quorum, but said it would meet again on Wednesday morning to continue with the interviews.

Possible solutions

He said the secretary to the legislature had presented him with several legal opinions, but that they were conflicting, and the committee in any case had neither the mandate nor the expertise to deal with them.

Morkel said he found Botha's objections strange, because Brynard's name had been on the list of candidates submitted by the DA for the shortlist last Thursday.

He said Botha had written to the Speaker of the legislature threatening that he would "procedurally and otherwise" frustrate the appointment of a public service commissioner during the current term of the legislature.

"So it's clear that the DA has got no intention of applying their mind to candidates, or going through a proper procedure," he said.

The DA is hoping to wrest control of the province from the ANC in this month's general election.