Johannesburg - Home Affairs Minister Aaron Motsoaledi says his ministry has been given a window of opportunity to implement electoral reforms with new electoral laws.
According to Motsoaledi, last year’s Constitutional Court judgment to allow for independent candidates to run as MPs has opened a new chapter in how the electoral laws must be changed.
He said the Concourt had found that the Electoral Law was inconsistent with the country’s highest laws.
“When looking at the judgment together with the Slabbert task team report of 2003 and the Motlanthe high level panel report, the department concluded that in complying with the Constitutional Court judgment, to accommodate independent candidates Parliament cannot just end there. Parliament must actually take a giant leap and come up with a new electoral system,” said Motsoaledi.
He maintained that Parliament must do what the Concourt had ordered it to do in fixing the law. He added that his department went on study tours around the world to look at different electoral systems.
After the study tours, they developed a policy on the electoral system for the country, and this was presented to the criminal justice cluster last November. Motsoaledi added that that the policy would be presented in the coming weeks to political principals in the cluster, which includes the departments International Relations and Co-operation, Justice, Defence, State Security, Home Affairs and the Police.
“From then, after that policy has been discussed by these ministers, it would then go to a joint Cabinet committee. That means all Cabinet committees, because it affects all of them. The Cabinet committee will be chaired by the president or deputy president, and that is likely to take place in the next two weeks, depending on whether the cluster ministers would have met this week as promised,” said Motsoaledi.
At the end, consultations with the committee the draft policy will be taken to the Cabinet for approval and once adopted there, it will be tabled in Parliament.
Political Bureau