MUNICIPAL POLLS MUST GO AHEAD IN OCTOBER

WILL South Africa hold the local government elections on October 27 or will the elections be postponed for a later date, possibly, in 2024?

That is the unusual question most citizens are asking following the electoral commission’s announcement that former deputy chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke had been asked to inquire on whether the Covid-19 lockdown conditions are conducive to holding free and fair elections.

The inquiry report is expected by July 21 and can lead to the postponement of these elections if selfish political party interests are left unchecked by ordinary citizens.

This is an unusual question because most of those calling for the postponement of the elections seem to miss out the single most important thing about our electoral democracy from a regulatory point of view. And that’s that electoral regulation isn’t a constraint on our democracy.

Instead, it’s a vital enabling input that ensures certainty for a smooth transition of power from one generation of leaders to another at regular intervals, during the course of the many challenges most democracies face from time to time.

The great competitive advantage that our constitutional democracy possesses is precisely that it has got rules for nearly everything relating to elections.

That means that things are predictable, including the timing of the expiry of the term of office.

As such, the calling and the holding of regular elections do not depend on interpretation of politicians. That gives citizens space to focus on the actual risks in the building and deepening of our democracy and the betterment of the people.

Ultimately, you can divide those with vested interest in the debate into four categories.

First, the politicians holding office who are seeking to cling to power and squeeze all they can out of the benefits of incumbency in the guise of the Covid-19 regulations. We should never allow them to do so.

Second, the prospective election candidates, many of whom are not members of any political party and whose chance to hold political office should not be unduly delayed.

Then, there are two other categories consisting of first-time and repeat voters, who are keen to hold politicians accountable for the broken and unfulfilled promises made five years ago to improve the quality of life for all, and not just the few politically connected individuals. Their interests count in favour of going ahead with the elections in October.

It’s false hope, therefore, when some politicians try to claim that by being “nimble” with rules regulating the timing of this year’s elections, the country can save lives and also claw back enough electoral confidence to amend the election regulatory framework so as to synchronise municipal elections with national and provincial elections, starting in 2024.

To me, it seems clear that those calling for the postponement are working off a wrong political model, which is not any less wrong because it’s shared by the governing parties and those in the opposition, and by nearly all the external critics of the current system of staggered elections at local, provincial and national levels.

The trouble is that “regulation” of the timing of elections is not an undifferentiated quantity that you can pour out more or less.

Each individual regulation is precious and unique, interacting with all others to produce a complicated, occasionally bizarre but basically coherent electoral system which constitutes the fundamental environment in which it is possible to hold together a constitutional democracy after all.

Any attempt to try to bend our own election regulatory system so as to give some political parties in office a competitive advantage will make our democracy poorer.

We’re bound to lose legitimacy in the eyes of the electorate and we will gain exactly nothing in terms of strengthening the accountability link between the elected representatives and the electorate.

There is no pot of gold at the end of this rainbow.