The Constitutional Court has granted President Cyril Ramaphosa direct leave to appeal the High Court judgment – in May – regarding his decision to assent to the National Health Insurance Act (NHI).
Business Day reports that in a legal challenge brought by the Board of Healthcare Funders (BHF) and the SA Private Practitioners Forum (SAPPF), the High Court had found that the President’s decision was reviewable.
The NHI Act has been challenged by Solidarity, the Board of Healthcare Funders, the Hospital Association of SA (Hospersa) and the SA Medical Association (SAMA).
In court papers, Ramaphosa’s legal adviser Geoffrey Mphaphuli, argued that the High Court’s decision ordering the President to furnish the record of his decision to the court within 10 days of the judgment positionally breached separation of powers by allowing lower courts to review presidential decisions.
“The assent to and signature of a Bill are obligations that lie exclusively with the President in terms of section 79(1) and 84(2) of the Constitution,” he said.
“Any challenge that the President has failed by some alleged standard (which has not yet been determined by the court) to comply with these unique constitutional obligations necessarily implicates the court in pronouncing upon the appropriate exercise of the presidential obligation and the applicable standards of judicial scrutiny that would apply.”
He added that the Constitution “requires that this is to be assessed by this court alone by virtue of its clear implications for the separation of powers”.
“By seeking to disclose the ‘record’, the lower courts will necessarily be dragged into the terrain of ‘checking the homework’ of the President in the exercise of his powers as Head of State, which the constitution conspicuously and deliberately leaves undefined and unqualified for sound constitutional reasons.”
Business Day PressReader article – Ramaphosa can appeal against NHI ruling (Open access)
See more from MedicalBrief archives:
President seeks top court intervention over NHI Act ruling
Judge orders Ramaphosa to hand over records on NHI Bill
BHF’s legal challenge to NHI taken to ‘wrong court’, says Presidency