It is less than 20 days before the seventh democratic elections are set to take place, and as expected, political parties are pulling all stops to make sure they secure as many votes as possible.
The build-up to this year’s elections saw the ANC dragging the newly formed Umkhonto Wesizwe party to court over the party’s trademark, while the DA caused an uproar with their election campaign advert that featured a burning the national flag, and now, the Labour Party’s request for an election date postponement sent out to the IEC.
This was reported by local publication ZiMoja which shared that the Labour Party, together with former ANC Secretary General Ace Magashule’s new party African Congress for Transformation and Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats had approached the commission requesting for the re-opening of the candidate list submission on reasons that, there were technical glitches on the commission’s website that made them unable to submit.
The submission portal opened on the 26th of January and political parties had until Friday the 8th of March, at 17h00 to submit their candidate list for this year’s elections. Many parties were able to submit their lists successfully.
The local publication shares that the IEC filed an application to the Constitution court in a bid to dismiss the three parties’ request for submission re-opening. It further shared details on how costly postponing the elections would be.
IEC commissioner, Nomsa Masuku said what the parties were asking for was indeed possible, adding:
“Their demands would be immensely costly and come with a price tag of R587 million. The online portal did not have any technical glitches and similarly, parties were able to comply.”
She further added, “Anyone who is preparing to contest the process should know that once an election date is proclaimed, the train starts moving.”
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