Parties left off ballot paper prepare for Concourt action

FIVE new parties left off the ballot paper in the upcoming elections have started galvanising their supporters across all provinces as they prepare to haul the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) to the Constitutional Court.

Newly-formed political parties such as Operation Dudula, Arise SA, the Cape Independent Party, the Defenders of the People and the Independent South African National Civic Organisation are currently in discussions on possibly taking the IEC to the Constitutional Court in order to contest their exclusion from the upcoming national and regional elections taking place on May 29.

This after their application was turned down by the Electoral Court today.

The crux of most of their issues stem from the political parties’ failure to meet Section 27 of the Electoral Act requirement to submit party lists no later than March 8.

According to the act, parties needed to submit three lists by the March 8 deadline, the first being the national candidate list which featured political parties contesting seats in the National Assembly.

Secondly, parties were expected to submit their candidate list for the national regional list which features political parties and independent candidates, following the Constitutional Court ruling to include independent candidates.

The last list was the provincial candidate list, which is for those seeking to be elected into the provincial legislature.

While there were no challenges with the provincial candidate list submissions, the national regional candidate list and the national list presented challenges for new political party entrants wanting to contest the upcoming elections.

It was reported that many of the political parties struggled with this requirement as they did not understand that they could not contest the national elections without submitting the regional ballot list as well for their parties.

The president of Operation Dudula, Zandile Dabula, said although their challenge was dismissed by the Electoral Court, they were not giving up their fight to ensure they too were part of the upcoming elections.

Dabula said the leaders of the affected parties were currently awaiting the reasons for the dismissal of the challenge from the Electoral Court in order to take the party’s challenge to the Concourt if that was necessary.

She said the party’s leaders were currently in national talks alongside their attorney.