CONCOURT LITIGATION PRESS STATEMENT: NOW WE WAIT...
Hello MVC friends and supporters,
Yesterday, My Vote Counts went to the Constitutional Court to defend the Constitution and hold political parties to account. We asked the Constitutional Court to declare that Parliament has failed to fulfill its constitutional obligation to enact financial disclosure legislation to regulate private donations to political parties.
This financial information is crucial for an informed right to vote, we argued, and necessary to protect the political rights from all forms of corruption. Counsel for Parliament conceded this, and agreed that citizens need access to such information in order exercise meaningful political rights. This was a huge concession, which vindicates the entire substance of our application.
However, Parliament argued that this necessary information can be garnered through an existing piece of legislation, the Promotion of Access to Information Act (PAIA); the very piece of legislation that was held in the IDASA litigation to be inappropriate for accessing private party funding records.
Thus, one of the key issues that emerged was the relevance of PAIA, and whether it is an adequate legislative tool under section 32 of the Constitution for the purposes of gaining access to secret party funding. If it is the case, as Parliament argued, then the principle of subsidiarity applies, which means that MVC should have attacked PAIA for being unconstitutional rather than bringing it directly to the Court under section 32 of the Constitution.