COPE saddened that Electoral Court has dismissed NFP case

4 July 2016

Congress of the People is saddened that the Electoral Court has dismissed the NFP case. The party obviously blundered and hundreds of thousands of voters will now be left in a quandary about what to do with their votes.

COPE believes that the Electoral Act needs to be amended. Parties that miss the deadline must have recourse to the Electoral Court. The Electoral Court must listen to the case and set a fine proportionate to the reasons for the failure. It must make the party pay heftily for missing the deadline. It must not prevent it from participating in the elections.

It is very possible for key officials of a political party to be given a huge bribe to sabotage that party from the inside. In our view the payment of the deposit should have two deadlines within a 36 hour period. When the first deadline is missed, the IEC must issue an alert to that party for it to rectify the problem in the second window. This will prevent any skulduggery from inside a party. We know very well how this works from our own bad experience.

COPE agrees that every political party should learn from this enormous mishap of the NFP and never leave the payment of the deposit to the last minute.

Finally, COPE encourages NFP supporters to remain united and not to lose hope. This is a indeed a major setback for them but they will have to survive it.

Issued by Dennis Bloem, COPE spokesperson, 4 July 2016