Cape Town - The public spat between Good party leader Patricia de Lille and her former party, the DA, is far from over.
De Lille has attacked the DA for spreading "untrue defamatory statements" via its call centre agents canvassing votes ahead of the May 8 elections.
The script issued to call centre personnel, which the Cape Argus has seen, instructs agents to answer questions about De Lille in relation to infighting within the DA with the following response: "We fired Patricia de Lille because she was involved in all sorts of wrongdoing in the City of Cape Town. The DA doesn’t allow corruption, and we’ll take action against anyone, even our own members."
De Lille sent the party a lawyer's letter demanding that the response be deleted on the grounds that is it "untrue".
"The statement is untrue and provided to the call centre personnel solely to bring our clients into disrepute. Ms de Lille was not 'fired' by the Democratic Alliance. It is true that the Democratic Alliance attempted to dismiss her by reason of a statement she had made expressing her intent to resign at a future date. That attempt was declared unlawful by the Western Cape High Court. Moreover, not a shred of evidence exists that our Ms de Lille has been guilty of any wrongdoing and certainly not any corruption," the letter reads.
"The publication of the untrue defamatory statements concerning our clients is unlawful. The publication is further a contravention of section 89 of the Electoral Act 1998 (Act 73 of 1998), as amended and Paragraph 9(1)(b) of the Electoral Code of Conduct," it continues.
De Lille's attorney further says the DA should delete the "defamatory paragraph from the script", and "instruct canvassers to refrain from making defamatory statements about our clients".
Commenting on the letter was DA national spokesperson Solly Malatsi, who said: “The letter is currently with our lawyers who will respond accordingly in due course".