UPPER HOUSE IN AFRICA

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27657, 13 May 1955, Page 13

UPPER HOUSE IN AFRICA

Reconstitution Planned (Rec. 10 p.m.) CAPE TOWN, May 12. The House of Assembly (Lower House), by 82 votes to 53,'last night gave the Government leave to introduce a bill to dissolve and reconstitute the Senate with almost double its present membership. The measure would give the Government just over a two-thirds majority in any joint session of both Houses and enable it to pass legislation taking coloured voters of mixed race from the common electoral rolls. Under the bill, the Senate would have 89 members instead of the present 48. The bill empowers the GovernorGeneral to dissolve the Senate at any time before the end of 1955. The Government’s present strength in the Assembly is 94, against a combined Opposition of 85. In the Senate it can now count on 30 elected and nominated senators in the 48-member Upper House. With 77 supporting senators in the proposed new Senate, against the Opposition’s 12, the Government could muster 171 votes in a joint session—five more than required for a two-thirds majprity. Mr Jacobus Strauss, the United Party leader, accused the Government of Iron Curtain methods and “steamroller” tactics. The Interior Minister (Dr. T. E. Donges) moved that the bill be introduced and Mr Strauss immediately tabled an amendment giving Opposition approval, provided the bill “did not alter the constitution of the Senate in such manner as to destroy the composition of Parliament/* The minority Labour Party leader, Mr Alexander Hepple, opposed the Government motion as “an attempt to pack the Senate and wipe out representative government.” The Liberal Party president, Mrs Margaret Ballinger, moved an amendment claiming that the Government had no mandate for the bill, which defied the law of the land. Worker’s Body Found.— Searchers today finally uncovered the body of a missing worker in the wreckage of New York’s Coliseum project. The body of the missing man. Joseph Lombardi, aged 55. a cement worker, was found under a slab of concrete held down by a mass o* rubble, after a section of the building under construction collapsed on Monday.—New York, May 11.