Madam Speaker, on a point of order: I am rising on Rule 110(6). Questions to the Deputy President are required to be submitted nine days before the Deputy President appears in this House. That is so that the NA Table can have a look at them, and the Deputy President's Office can also have a look at them and prepare responses to them.
Instead of the Deputy President coming here today and hiding behind the sub judice rule, I think that it would have been far more honest of him to have indicated that, when the questions were tabled in his Office, rather than to wait for the day and to come here and refuse to answer questions in the House. [Applause.]
If the Deputy President had failed to do that, I think that the NA Table should have then ruled these questions out of order to enable the opposition to have put forward other questions or prioritised other questions.
What has essentially happened today is that the Deputy President has been allowed to hide behind a spurious interpretation of the sub judice rule and the opposition has been denied the opportunity to exercise oversight over him. [Applause.]