Durban - The NFP will not contest the upcoming local government election after the party failed to pay its registration fee by June 2 – the IEC’s deadline.
This has been confirmed to The Mercury by KwaZulu-Natal electoral chief Mawethu Mosery.
“The NFP is disqualified,” he said. “Some parties did not pay at all while others paid post the date, which was June 2. The NFP falls under this category, they didn’t pay before the deadline. Their registration fee came in much later,” he said.
Mosery was unable to say when the NFP paid the fee, said to be in the region of about R90 000.
He said the NFP had been made aware of this and understood that the party had taken the matter to the electoral court.
He said the NFP’s disqualification was alongside 2000 other candidates.
“Their disqualification is alongside a total of 2000 candidates we disqualified. They were all disqualified for various reasons. Some candidates were not registered voters, others were registered voters but not in the municipalities they were running for election,” he said.
Mosery said many of the disqualified were either not registered as voters or were not registered as voters in the municipalities they intended to contest in.
“The second batch was of people whose names were submitted but did not have enough names. Some of them have 30 names, 40 and even 45, they were also disqualified.” he said.
Third category was of the parties and candidates who did not pay registration fees on time.
Efforts to obtain comment from the NFP had not been successful at the time of publication.
* This is a developing story. For more details, please read Wednesday’s edition of The Mercury.
The Mercury