The ANC says it will approach the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to reopen its systems so that the party can register its local government candidates who could not be captured.
This has seen the party not being able to field candidates in 35 of the country’s 257 municipalities.
“Many candidates IDs were rejected due to the absence of voter registration during the period. The IEC system repeatedly froze and locked our administrators out during the final few hours before the deadline data already entered was voided and had to be re-entered,” ANC deputy secretary-general Jessie Duarte said during a media briefing on Thursday.
“This will have a huge impact on citizens, political parties and society generally. In certain instances, this might result in a change of government regardless of how citizens might want to vote.”
The IEC, which opened its systems on August 3, gave political parties and independent candidates until Monday at 9pm to register individuals who will contest positions across the country’s municipalities during the polls.
Duarte says there were technical glitches on the electoral body’s system on Monday when it attempted to enter data on the system. This is after the party confirmed on Monday that it had registered 10,000 candidates.
Duarte said the ANC had approached the IEC to reopen its systems, which the electoral body rejected, prompting the governing party to launch its application at the Electoral Court.
The ANC is expected to file its application at the Electoral Court on Friday, which the EFF says it will oppose.
The opposition party says the reasons put forward by the ANC to reopen the submission process is “false and disingenuous because the IEC had an option of manual submissions for candidates that could not be submitted electronically.”
“It is therefore opportunistic and unacceptable of the ANC, which knew of the election date before all political parties to approach the Electoral Court to accommodate their incompetence and inability to meet deadlines because of internal infighting and factionalism,” the party’s spokesperson, Vuyani Pambo, said in a statement.
Duarte says the technical glitches and other issues “beyond its control” such as the banning of political gatherings during level 4 lockdown has led it to seek relief from the Electoral Court.
“Covid-19 alert level 4 banned all meetings for most of July and this meant that more than 15,000 branch and community meetings had to be held from late July until August 20 to nominate and hold community meetings with ward candidates. This had a huge impact on the already tight deadlines we had to meet,” she said.
The IEC earlier this week said it would inform parties by Friday of candidates who may be appearing on multiple party lists, which is not permitted. Parties will have until September 2 to amend their candidate lists. The final list will be publicly available on September 7.
The ANC joined NGOs and other political parties in the IEC’s bid at the Constitutional Court to postpone the elections to February. The case was heard in August and the outcomes are pending.
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