Johannesburg - The Democratic Alliance would soon table a bill in Parliament that would allow the Electoral Commission of SA (IEC) to ensure free and fair elections, MP James Selfe said on Monday.
The Free and Fair Elections Member’s Bill would allow the IEC to play “a much more activist role” in ensuring free and fair elections, said Selfe.
“At the moment what tends to happen is that the IEC tells us to either approach the Electoral Court or the police, but the police are busy solving criminal cases and the Electoral Court takes a long time and it is very expensive….what we are asking the IEC in line with what it had previously committed to do, is to create an office for electoral offences to which one can report instances of electoral fraud or maladministration,” Selfe told reporters in Johannesburg.
In terms of the bill, the IEC would probe cases reported to it and hand over evidence to the National Prosecuting Authority, he said.
Selfe said the country needed the bill because even though the Constitution stated that the IEC must ensure that the elections are free and fair, the commission though it presently administers the elections well, it does not ensure the polls are free and fair “in terms of the internationally accepted definition of what free and fair elections are”.
“We want this bill to prohibit certain kinds of conducts, such as the abuse of state resources and mainly the abuse of the public broadcaster [SABC] particularly during election times,” he said.
“We have already pointed out not long ago the extent to which the public broadcaster gives much more media coverage to the ruling party than any other party contesting the elections…it [bill] is meant to regulate these sorts of aspects so that the playing fields in the South African electoral arena are levelled.”
African News Agency