The Electoral Commission of SA’s (IEC) move to approach the Constitutional Court to appeal against an earlier order of the Electoral Court, which paved the way for former president Jacob Zuma to run for election, is not an attack against the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party or the former president, IEC chair Mosotho Moepya says.
Should the IEC not have approached the apex court it would run the risk of objections to the outcomes of the May 29 polls, particularly whether the elections were conducted in a free and fair manner, Moepya said.
The IEC applied to the Constitutional Court last week for an order to declare that Zuma had been convicted of an offence and sentenced to more than 12 months’ imprisonment and was accordingly not eligible to be a member of and not qualified to stand for election to the National Assembly until five years had elapsed since the completion of his sentence.
The MK party accused the IEC of turning to the Constitutional Court shortly after the Electoral Court’s ruling, saying the IEC wanted to prevent Zuma from returning to parliament.
The newly formed political party has also called for IEC commissioner Janet Love to resign, accusing her of bias against Zuma. However, the IEC on Wednesday said there was no basis to MK’s accusations and the commission was not considering taking action against her.
“It’s not about MK and the candidate of the MK party, but it’s about us understanding that the court found we have done it incorrectly ... if we did nothing about it and people were aggrieved and we go through an election and some people argue that this election cannot be free and fair because you have had a candidate who was not meant to participate,” Moepya said.
He was speaking at an elections dialogue hosted by the Wits School of Governance on Thursday.
The MK party is one of the 52 political parties that will be on the national ballot paper. Voters will receive three ballot papers to elect candidates to represent them in the National Assembly and provincial legislatures. The National Assembly is made up of 400 seats, 200 of which are contested only by political parties. Independent candidates can contest only half of the seats in the National Assembly.
The national ballot paper will consist of a list of political parties vying for 200 seats in the National Assembly and will be used to vote for 52 political parties contesting.
The regional or province-to-national ballots will consist of political parties and independent candidates. The number of contestants range from 30 to 44 on regional ballots. The configuration of this ballot is a single column.
The IEC said it was confident that the elections could not be rigged because of the safeguards it had put in place.
“There are many safeguards we have put in place from the moment a ballot is cast ... so much so that if a dispute arises we can fix it right then and there,” Moepya said. “A ballot paper that someone votes on ... we have security features on it... so we are not worried about that.”
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