Johnathan Paoli
The African Congress for Transformation (ACT), the Labour Party (LP) and the Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats (AASD) have asked the Con Court to reverse their decision not to extend the deadline for political parties to submit missing candidate names and information.
The parties approached the country’s apex court on Wednesday saying that their exclusion would deny the parties’ right to vote for a political party they chose, as well as the right of the candidates to stand for office.
The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) set 5pm March 8 as the cut-off point for political parties to submit their party candidate lists with the provision that those who did not meet it would be ineligible to participate. This decision was made in terms of section 27 of the Electoral Act.
Now legal teams for the parties have argued that their failure to meet the deadline was due to a malfunction of the commission’s Online Candidate Nomination System (OCNS), which caused a glitch on the day.
Advocate for ACT, Gregory Amm, said that the exclusion, whilst not only unreasonably pedantic, would culminate in denying the constitutionally protected right of at least 120 000 people to vote for a party of their choice, and deny ACT candidates their right to run for election.
“The frustration of either of those rights, which we submit is presently the status quo, has the effect of rendering the elections unfair,” Amm said.
He said that the commission’s description of the political party’s “failure” to comply with its deadline is misleading as the failure to submit the vital information was due to a reason, not of the party’s making.
“It’s not a subjective or negative failure, but an objective inability which we submit is that the portal malfunctioned. We don’t suggest that the portal crashed and we don’t claim the portal was not live,” Amm said.
Furthermore, the advocate defended the claim referencing the fact that other parties also experienced similar technical difficulties with the commission’s online portal on the same day.
The advocate said the IEC has the power in terms of Section 20 of the Electoral Act to amend the election timetable and extend the deadline for the submission of the lists, but as yet refrained from even considering the possibility.
Both ACT and the AASD have called on the IEC to reopen its online portal for “an hour or two” to submit outstanding documents to the IEC and resort to postponing the elections as a last measure, while the NUMSA-affiliated Labour party has called for an outright postponement of the 29 May elections.
The IEC, on the other hand, has said while this would, in fact be the inevitable result if the submissions window were reopened, it would be immensely costly – estimated to be in the region of R587 million.
To date arguments have been made, but the Con Court is yet to hand down its judgement. Many believe the appeal will fall on deaf ears and be dismissed.
INSIDE POLITICS
