By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The African National Congress (ANC) has instructed its legal representatives to oppose Democratic Alliance (DA) application for leave to intervene in its case before the Electoral Court in Bloemfotein.
DA asked the Electoral Court to reject the ANC’s appeal to register six of the country’s 257 councils which missed the IEC submission deadline.
DA federal council chairperson Ashor Sarupen says electoral deadlines cannot be optional, adding that the law must be applied equally to all parties contesting the elections.
“The system expressly requires parties to “submit as final”: a process all parties clearly understood and successfully followed.”
He said the ANC, or any other political party, cannot receive special treatment because it did not meet a deadline.
The dispute centres on 181 candidates, comprising 130 on PR ballot and 51 on the ward ballot, whose electronic submissions did not complete the final step on the IEC’s system before the August 28 17:00 deadline.
The affected areas are limited to six of the country’s 257 councils: Nguza Hill, Port St Johns, Walter Sisulu, and Sunday’s River Valley in the Eastern Cape, uMshwathi in Kwazulu-Natal and the Mangaung metropolitan municipality in the Free State.
The ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula said the DA is not a party to that decision the court must make.
“What the DA asks for takes two thousand two hundred and seventy-four candidates off the ballot, and forty-four of the forty-five parties they belong to are not the ANC, added Mbalula.”
The IEC officially refused the ANC’s request to process the stored information on September 4, prompting the party to approach the Electoral Court under Section 20 of the Electoral Commission Act. The application seeks to overturn the IEC’s decision and direct the commission to recognise the submissions as valid.