[6] In March 2003, during the first floor-crossing window, Morkel indeed resigned from NNP and joined a contingent of his colleagues, led by Sheila Camerer, in registering as a DA member.
[8] In the 2004 general election, he was highly ranked on the DA's provincial party list for the Western Cape,[9] and he secured re-election to his seat.
[11] In August 2004, shortly after Morkel's election to a second term, the Scorpions announced that he was among the many MPs under investigation for possible abuse of parliamentary air-travel vouchers, in what became known as the Travelgate scandal.
[12] Similarly, in January 2005, when the Scorpions announced that 40 MPs would face criminal charges for their role in Travelgate, Morkel stepped forward to identify himself as one of them.
[19]The Mail & Guardian suggested that Morkel had "outsmarted" the DA, since the Travelgate scandal had weakened his position in the party and would likely have led to his expulsion if he was convicted.
[22] During the September 2007 floor-crossing window, Morkel announced that he had resigned from the PIM – which thus became effectively defunct – in order to join the governing African National Congress (ANC).
[4] The newspaper suspected that Morkel had decided to leave the PIM because, in the minor party, "he stood no chance at all of being re-elected at the next general election in 2009".