PA will unseat DA in 2016 - McKenzie

140507. Cape Town. Gayton McKenzie, leader of the Patriotic Alliance, speaks to the media outside the Mannenberg Community Centre where he casted his vote on Wednesday. Picture Henk Kruger/Cape Argus (Tel : 0827318155)

140507. Cape Town. Gayton McKenzie, leader of the Patriotic Alliance, speaks to the media outside the Mannenberg Community Centre where he casted his vote on Wednesday. Picture Henk Kruger/Cape Argus (Tel : 0827318155)

Published Jul 14, 2014

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Cape Town - The Patriotic Alliance is not giving up on its ambitious plans to unseat the DA in the Western Cape.

Party leader Gayton McKenzie says his hopes of leading the Western Cape to a new political home are far from over despite the party’s poor showing during its first elections in May.

Instead McKenzie is choosing to focus on the positive side of their maiden performance.

“The DA and ANC had their chances in government, and they’ve failed. We now know that there are 8 500 voters who feel the same as us and we will build on that knowledge and expand the party’s reach,” he said.

The party initially focused its attention on the coloured vote but opened its doors to everyone, irrespective of their criminal records.

“We got 14 000 votes in five months. We intend to surprise a lot of people, now we know how this election game is played,” said McKenzie.

Despite losing its R650 000 deposit for not getting a seat in either national or provincial parliament, McKenzie boasted that the Patriotic Alliance now had the experience, lessons and money for the next elections.

 

Vowing to return for the 2016 local government elections but this time armed with a clear strategy and the “same bag of tricks” the bigger parties used, McKenzie said he would not stop until he’d changed the political landscape in the Cape.

 

“We are not joining another party or forming a new one, we will enter the next election race under the same green banner of the Patriotic Alliance.”

The Western Cape is the only province not ruled by the ANC, and where political parties have for years attempted to sway the coloured vote away from the ruling DA.

McKenzie, a firm believer in uniting the coloured vote, says while they’ve been approached by other groups about a “super coloured formation”, nothing had come of the initiative. “I will wish them well, if they ever get it off the ground. Politics costs a lot of money.”

McKenzie said the people who voted for the DA in the recent elections would discover in 2016 that there had been been no substantial improvement in their lives. “They will still be unemployed, poor and without proper housing and sanitation when 2016 comes. Hopefully then they will not be able to ignore the obvious.”

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