Five parties that had taken legal action against the Electoral Commission to seek the amendment of the election timetable have lost their cases in the Electoral Court.
In the judgment delivered electronically, the specialist court found that the arguments that the parties had submitted could not be sustained.
The Labour Party, the African Congress for Transformation, Afrikan Alliance of Social Democrats, All African Allied Congress and independent candidate Doctor Sipho Pienaar Malapane had argued that they could not comply with the March 8 deadline due to alleged technical glitches with the commission’s Online Candidate Nomination System.
Electoral Court’s finding states: “The IEC must not be placed in a situation where it has to make ad-hoc decisions about political parties and candidates who have not complied with Section 27 of the Electoral Act.”
The Section prescribes that a registered party intending to contest an election must nominate candidates and submit a list or lists of those candidates for that election to the Chief Electoral Officer not later than the relevant date stated in the election timetable.
However, the five parties failed to comply with this Section and placed their failure to comply at the doorstep of the Commission.
The court agreed with the submission made by the Commission that fairness cannot be assessed subjectively by considering only the circumstances of non-compliant parties or candidates and that it is inherently unfair to parties and candidates that complied with a deadline to permit the alteration of that deadline.
The court found that the parties and the candidates’ failure to comply with the deadline was due to their own conduct.
Labour Party’s bid to challenge the IEC election timetable dismissed: Mawethu Mosery:
