Tshwane - There was nothing wrong with Democratic Alliance leader Mmusi Maimane announcing that his party has outrun the ANC in the Tshwane metro, before the Electoral Commission of South (IEC) does so officially, the electoral body said on Friday.
“There is nothing irregular or wrong with that pronouncement, in the sense that the commission has provided three opportunities through which the public can get to known the results of the elections,” IEC deputy chairperson Terry Tselane said at the national results operations centre in Tshwane.
“That is actually testimony to the transparency that we have put into the process. Firstly, the results are announced at the voting station level, there are party agents there and they can transmit those results to their centres and they are able to collate the results the way they want.”
Secondly, South Africans can access all results through the IEC mobile applications which are captured and scanned.
“You can also be able to make your own determination in terms of the results. Thirdly, we have this centre (the NROC), which is a platform for political parties, analysts and anybody interested to see the results as they come,” said Tselane.
“Even though the results are there for everybody to see, they are not official results because we still have to go through particular processes. From our side, we still have to deal with with a few issues. Of course depending on how the commission looks at issues, we may, in certain instances, nullify some of the results and therefore what party agents may have given you could still change depending on what we regard as irregularities.”
An emphatic Maimane told reporters that his DA has outwitted the governing African National Congress in the hotly-contested Tshwane metro.
“I’m quite glad to announce the fact that here in the City of Tshwane, by all our current projections, certainly we will be the largest party and therefore I want to congratulate the DA for having successfully beat the ANC here in Tshwane,” Maimane told a huge scrum of local and international media at the IEC’s national results operations centre ahead of the IEC briefing.
“We will soon be working hard to form the government right here. I want to congratulate Solly Msimanga for having run an exceptional campaign. He has been everywhere and the people of Tshwane have expressed a view.”
Journalists quizzed Maimane why he was making the announcement before the final tally of results but he stuck to his guns.
“We have been waiting for most of today [Friday]. I’m not giving you the full briefing now of all the election results. There are still many more to come from places like Johannesburg and other places we are looking at where the ANC could dip below 50 percent,” said Maimane.
“How does this undermine the IEC? I don’t see anything untoward.”
African News Agency