News that the ANC government has quietly been working on draft legislation to stabilise coalition governments in the local sphere has caused some consternation among smaller political parties who attended the 'national dialogue' on coalition governments held at UWC over the weekend.

In 2017 the Constitutional Court held in United Democratic Movement v Speaker of the National Assembly and Others that nothing prohibited the Speaker of the National Assembly from allowing a vote of no confidence in the president to be conducted by secret ballot.

The judgment, authored by then Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, was widely praised at the time as it would allow a vote of no confidence against then-president Jacob Zuma to be conducted by secret ballot, which would protect dissident ANC MPs who voted in favour of such a motion from censure by their party.

Because there is a natural tendency to evaluate a constitutional rule by focusing on its effect on the immediate problem at hand and to assume that it will have the same effect in all other situations, there is always a risk that a rule adopted to fix one problem will cause other problems and make things worse in the long run.

The Constitutional Court acknowledged this problem in the UDM judgment, noting that while secret ballot votes of no confidence might sometimes enhance accountability, they could also have disastrous consequences as they could result in the removal or election of a president, premiers...