ActionSA threatens IEC with legal action

ACTIONSA has threatened the Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) with legal action after its name was not included in the final draft ballot papers for ward candidates.

The political party said the 10am deadline for the IEC to remedy the issue came and went without a response, and they presumed that the IEC had no intention to remedy the matter.

“ActionSA has concluded a meeting with our legal team, who are bewildered by the commission's refusal to remedy this issue. They have affirmed our position that there is no legal basis for the commission to refuse this request and are confident the courts will share this perspective.”

But IEC spokesperson Kate Bapela said the absence of the abbreviated name of ActionSA on the ward ballots happened because at the point of registering as a party, they elected not to register an abbreviated name or acronym.

“The absence of the abbreviated name of ActionSA on the ward ballots is because, at the point of registering as a party, ActionSA elected not to register an abbreviated name or acronym. ActionSA, in their documents in which they applied for registration as a political party, and which must be publicly lodged in terms of the regulations, responded with a ‘Not Applicable' in the space where the political party was required to indicate its abbreviated name.

“The party went further to indicate that ‘there is no abbreviation of the name of the party' as part of its application documentation. The application was lodged in Government Gazette 43940, published on 27 November 2020.

“The insinuation that the commission is acting without due impartiality is without foundation and mischievous.

“The onus to choose party identifiers rests with the political party and not the commission and the scheme in the ballot design has been part of our electoral management practice since the inception of democratic local government in 2000,” Bapela said.

The party however said there was no provision in law which limits or empowers the IEC to rely solely on a party's registration documentation for the construction of ballot papers.

ActionSA said in their brief time as a political party it had been “beset by issues with the IEC”.

“We have been refused to register as a party and we have been ignored in our concerns about the MultiParty Democracy Fund that the IEC openly advocates for people to exclusively fund political parties established in Parliament,” the party said.

They said a legal team would immediately begin drafting papers.