IEC fires employee behind leaks
JOHANNESBURG - The Electoral Commission (IEC) has confirmed the dismissal of its employee who leaked the candidates’ lists of the African National Congress (ANC) and the uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party.
The commission instituted an investigation into the leak following the circulation of the lists on social media. It said its employee’s actions were illegal.
Conceded
Earlier the commission conceded that the leak of the candidates’ lists originated from its office.
The ANC President Cyril Ramaphosa has since welcomed the investigation, saying the party has nothing to hide. The Chief Electoral Officer, Sy Mamabolo, addressed the media in Centurion, Pretoria, yesterday.
Report
“The commission is able to provide a preliminary report as follows, the investigation has narrowed the source of the disclosure to a workstation that has been used to generate and store those reports.
Later the said reports were deleted from the workstation. Earlier yesterday that workstation was secured and imaged in the presence of the officials whose credentials were used to generate the reports.”
Constitution
Meanwhile, the Executive Chairperson of the Institute of Election Management Services in Africa (IEMSA), Terry Tselane, said the Democratic Alliance’s (DA) request to have the United States (US) observe the upcoming general elections is a violation of the Constitution.
The DA penned a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to seek them to come and oversee May 29 polls.
Tselane call on the IEC to take firm action against the DA.
He said: “That letter that is supposed to be coming from the DA is very strange indeed and it’s strange because the DA is an official opposition and you would have expected them to understand the rules and the laws of the country particularly the Constitution.
“When you ask a foreign entity to basically come and do voter tabulations, election tabulation you are basically telling them I’ve got no confidence in the capacity of the electoral commission to run the election,” Tselane added.