According to the Section, if a registered party that has submitted a list of candidates has not fully complied with Section 27, the Chief Electoral Officer must notify that party of its non-compliance.
The party alleges that the IEC neglected to do this and only alerted the party of alleged defects in its submissions on the 27th of March when the objections period had closed, when it ought to have done so on the 18th of March in accordance with the election timetable.
The IEC alleges that ASA failed to upload its regional candidate list and therefore cannot appear on the national list. ASA has hauled the Commission to the Electoral Court for the court’s intervention on the matter.
Counsel on behalf of the party, Advocate Dali Mpofu (SC), “Let’s assume that something went wrong. Let’s say that they had picked up that you paid so much money but your regional list is not here. That’s the section that prompts what must happen on the 18th of March and they didn’t do that. So, this is another reviewable error so to speak. That means they breached Section 28(1) anyway. Instead of telling us that there’s an error, they actually told us that there is no error because they put us on the national list. That’s a clear legality review where the IEC has simply failed to comply with 28(1).”
