IEC ‘not dead set’ on poll in October
Chief electoral officer of the Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC) Sy Mamabolo has refuted claims that the commission was hellbent on elections at all cost.
Mamabolo was speaking yesterday before the start of the hearing of oral submissions on whether this year’s local government elections can be held amid a surge in Covid-19 cases.
“There is a point I want to clarify, at the outset and that is that the IEC is hellbent on an election at all cost,” said Mamabolo.
“That is not the position of the IEC. The position of the IEC is that it had to technically prepare for the conduct of an election should such an election be lawfully called.
“And by technical preparation we mean procuring voting stations, training staff who will run the electoral process and preparing arrangements for candidate nomination.
“We did indicate that the constitutional requirements for election are two-fold.
“One, there is a regularity impulse of an election, in other words, there has to be an election on regular basis, and to that extent we needed to be technically ready to deliver an election that in congruent with regularity requirement of the constitution.
“We are working to be technically ready in order to meet the constitutional requirement of regularity yet in so far as there is a constitutional responsibility to ensure that elections are free and fair, we have instituted a process to which all South Africans are happily participating.”
Former deputy chief justice Dikgang Moseneke’s inquiry into free and fair local government elections during the Covid-19 pandemic started with public hearings yesterday.
The IEC has previously been criticised by Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, who accused it of being too close to the ANC, raising doubts about its ability to conduct free and fair municipal elections in October.
Speaking at a press conference in Johannesburg recently, Malema accused Mamabolo of being controlled by the ANC from Luthuli House.
He accused the commission of corruption, saying some of its members “can’t wait to print posters of the IEC, calling for elections and ballot papers and T-shirts and contracting their own relatives”.
“If they were driven by rationality and the need to save lives, they would have waited for the former deputy chief justice to release his report,” said Malema.
The inquiry will hear oral submissions from the electoral commission, as well as representatives from the health department and health nongovernmental organisations.