The MK party, led by former president Jacob Zuma, believes the May 29 election was stolen and sought to halt the declaration of the May 31 election results as free and fair. . Photo by Per Anders Pettersson/Getty Images)
The South African Electoral Commission (IEC) has asked the Electoral Tribunal to either dismiss a new Electoral Tribunal challenge to the results of the May 29 national and local elections by the Umkhonto wesizwe (MK) party, or revise the decision. They are asking for the payment to be postponed until the results are known. It reversed some of the costs of an earlier attempt to override the election results.
The IEC claims the application filed last month by former president Jacob Zuma's party is a “disgust and an abuse of court process”. That's because the party knows that existing court issues regarding the election results are still unresolved.
Last week, the IEC legal team sent a letter to the court, at the limit We will object to the MK Party's application and ask the court to rule that it cannot be heard until the previous issue is completed.
The MK party had filed a complaint with the court last month, presenting new evidence of widespread irregularities in the IEC's data collection process in compiling and announcing election results.
It also filed a technical report stating that it cannot guarantee the integrity of IEC's data and systems and contains evidence that the verification report provided by Deloitte is unreliable.
It asked the court to set aside the election results and order President Cyril Ramaphosa to hold new elections within 90 days of the conclusion of the case.
The party withdrew the matter early because it was not yet ready to go to court, and claimed that the IEC was attempting to censor the matter in an attempt to prevent it from being brought before judges.
Despite winning nearly 15% of the vote nationally and 45% in KwaZulu-Natal in the first election campaign, the MK party believed that votes were being taken away from them, and the party held a free and fair May 31 election. attempted to cancel the announcement of the results.
The IEC moved ahead with the declaration, and MK filed a lawsuit in court, but they withdrew it because they were unable to collate evidence by the deadline. The IEC now asked the court to decide on the case and issue a costs order against the MK parties, rather than granting withdrawal.
In its initial notice of opposition to the application, the IEC argued that the application could not be heard because “there is a litigation pending before the Election Court between the same parties based on the same cause of action and regarding the same subject matter.” . .
“The applicant knows that a court decision regarding the feasibility of withdrawing the applicant's (earlier) application is pending and that the costs of that application have not yet been determined or paid. “The application process is therefore persistent and an abuse of court process,” the IEC said.
The IEC and Chief Electoral Officer Sai Mamabolo asked the Electoral Tribunal to rule on the challenge before further arguments on the MK Party's application are heard.