National party bosses are set to finalise the makeup of a new coalition government to run Nelson Mandela Bay this week.
This comes after opposition parties submitted proposals on what portfolios they were most interested in to their national bosses late on Sunday.
The parties hope to unseat mayor Athol Trollip on Friday.
The councillors submitted several motions on Friday last week, including to remove Trollip, speaker Jonathan Lawack and chief whip Werner Senekal, and to have the council rescind its decision to scrap the deputy mayor position.
The motions were accompanied by a petition signed by 61 councillors requesting a special council sitting on Friday.
Lawack said on Sunday he was still applying his mind to the request.
Up for grabs are Trollip’s job, the deputy mayor position – if the decision to do away with it is rescinded – and 11 mayoral committee positions.
The United Front’s Zanoxolo Wayile confirmed that the party’s leaders would consider proposals on Monday or Tuesday. AIC general secretary Mahlobo Jafta also said they were awaiting a collective proposal from the councillors.
Attempts to reach EFF secretary-general Godrich Gardee and ANC Eastern Cape secretary Lulama Ngcukayitobi were unsuccessful.
UDM councillor Mongameli Bobani and the UF’s Mkhuseli Mtsila said they would attend meetings to discuss proposals.
The councillors’ proposal is expected to include a co-governance agreement.
AIC councillor Thsonono Buyeye said they were planning to submit a proposal by the end of Sunday.
“For some of us, this is not about positions [or] removing a certain individual, it is about removing the DA,” Buyeye said.
“We [AIC] don’t want to be a statistic – we have heard audio clips where councillors from the ACDP and the COPE [talk] about how they were not consulted about another party [the PA] joining the coalition.”
He said what was more worrying was that Bobani and Daniels had similar concerns.
“There are positive things, but the truth is that COPE and the ACDP are suffocating, the parties who are there are complaining,” Buyeye said.
The opposition parties, with the PA, hold a combined 61-seat majority of 120 seats.
The DA, COPE and ACDP together have 59 seats, the ANC has 50, the EFF six, the UDM two and the PA, AIC and United Front have one each.