Postponing elections will cost R500 million

THE Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) has argued that the requested postponement of the national elections later this month would cost the country more than R500 million.

This comes as the newly formed Labour Party lodged a court bid to have the elections moved to a later date due to issues with its registration and delays caused by alleged IEC technical glitches.

Last month, the Electoral Court dismissed the application by the Labour Party and two other parties calling for the elections to be deferred.

The IEC, in its court papers filed with the Constitutional Court, says the country will spend more than R500 million to postpone what is believed to be the country’s most intensely faught election later this month.

This court bid comes just under 20 days before the election on May 29 as the commission opposes an application launched by the Labour Party.

The party claims that it couldn’t meet the deadline to submit its candidate list because of technical issues with the IEC’S online portal.

The Labour Party, alongside Ace Magashule’s African Congress for Transformation (ACT) party and the African Alliance of Social Democrats (AASD), are the main applicants in the legal tussle to get the IEC to move the elections.

After failing to convince the Electoral Court last month, the parties approached the Constitutional Court, hoping to secure a favourable outcome.

In the matter before the apex court, the commission argued that its online portal was fully functional and put the responsibility back to the affected parties.

On Wednesday, legal counsel for the Labour Party argued that the claims made by the IEC that its online portal worked perfectly were not true.

According to the SABC News report, Advocate Chris Loxton argued that the IEC, by its own admission, confirmed that only 65% of parties managed to upload their documents in accordance with Section 27 of the Electoral Act by the relevant date (March 8, 2024) stated in the election timetable.

“There are frequent references to a handful or a very small minority of parties who were unable to upload their documents in time, that the vast majority of those who were required to do so did so successfully. That’s just untrue. A 35% failure rate is not a small minority and a 65% is not a vast majority. What it indicates is that despite glowing reports from the service provider, who said their system was working well, and the argument that if some could do it, all could do it, there were significant difficulties,” Loxton argued.

The Constitutional Court has yet to make its final determination on the matter.