Samkelo Biyela
The ANC is taking its fight over disputed candidate lists to the Electoral Court, after the IEC rejected the party’s request to recognise lists it says were submitted before the deadline.
ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula says the party submitted it’s candidate lists to the Electoral Commission before the deadline, but technical difficulties prevented final confirmation.
He says the party did not seek to add or change names, but asked the IEC to process information already captured on its system.
“The operators working on the affected list were locked out of the commission’s system and confirmations stopped arriving,” said Mbalula.
The dispute affects 181 ANC candidates across six municipalities in the Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Free State.
He continued, “The candidate information was in the commission’s system before five o’clock. We experienced difficulties.”
Mbalula says the ANC is requesting the Electoral Court to recognise the lists as lawfully submitted, however the IEC rejected the request.
The ANC has successfully registered more than 9,000 candidates nationally, and insists the court challenge is not an attempt to seek special treatment for the party.
The party wants the court to determine whether information uploaded and stored on the IEC’s system before the deadline should legally be regarded as a completed submission.
Despite the ENC’s call, the IEC maintains that the deadline applied equally to all political parties.
Listen to Mbalula’s sentiments below…
