There’s still concern over the defacing of party election posters, as political parties put final touches to their campaigns.
Various party posters have been vandalised on the R27 West Coast Road in the Tableview Parklands area of Cape Town. The defacing of posters has been seen countrywide.
The IEC says that this flies in the face of a democratic electoral system.
Election posters are one of the means used by political parties to send their messages to South Africans to convince them to vote for them.
Ripping off the posters of parties constitutes a crime. The IEC says if prosecuted, a person can serve five to ten years in jail.
If a party is involved in defacing the posters of opponents, it constitutes breaking the Electoral Code and such a party can be prosecuted through the Electoral Court.
IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo says it goes against electoral democracy because parties print these posters at great costs.
He called on people to stop defacing posters of political parties. Eligible voters will make their mark in the sixth democratic national and provincial election in the next few days.
It is one of the most contested general elections since the dawn of democracy with 26-point seven million registered voters.
