IRR #SaveTheVote project considers approaching ConCourt again

8 September 2021

The Electoral Commission’s (IEC) attempt to reopen candidate nominations for this year’s national municipal elections is being opposed by the DA, in papers filed to the Constitutional Court.

The EFF has also repeatedly rejected reopening the candidates list as ultra vires and beyond the IEC’s powers on the basis that once the ConCourt had dismissed the EFF’s own appeal to reopen candidate nominations, the IEC could not grant the same relief.

The Institute of Race Relations (IRR) acted as a friend – amicus curiae – of the Constitutional Court in opposing the postponement and is now considering a motion to return in that capacity to oppose the IEC’s latest dereliction.

From the beginning, the IRR opposed, and condemned, Cogta Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma’s election “proclamation” on August 3 as an act of voter suppression sabotage. This is the poisoned seed from which has grown a thorny bramble of confusion, mistrust, and democratic dysfunction, which now includes the IEC’s latest error.

In precise terms, the voter suppression was correctly overturned by the court, which instructed that two changes to the original timetable must be considered: first, that the date of the election could be moved from October 27 to November 1; and, second, that the voters’ roll must be reopened.

Any other changes considered “reasonably necessary” to facilitate those two moves are permitted, but no more revision of the election timetable following the August 3 proclamation is allowed. The rest of the timetable, according to the ConCourt’s order, “shall…remain applicable”.

Said IRR head of campaigns Gabriel Crouse: “The IEC is marching ahead as if it had the power to reinterpret the Constitution willy-nilly, despite the apex court’s order. The IEC makes to burn deadlines like kindling and it must be stopped.”

“Never before has the IEC been so confused about what a deadline is – but we can help explain why hard deadlines are necessary for elections to be fair and update new facts the ConCourt may not otherwise know. We hope that the ConCourt, however reluctantly, will open itself up to the new matter of its order being misinterpreted to ventilate reason, dispel confusion, and once again secure regular, free and fair elections.”

Issued by Gabriel Crouse, IRR Head of Campaigns, 8 September 2021