Political Party Funding Act should to be reviewed: Maimane

Leader of the One South Africa Movement, Mmusi Maimane, is calling for the review of the Political Party Funding Act, which comes into effect on Thursday. He was making his presentation at the first sitting of the Ministerial Advisory Committee of experts appointed to look into the country’s electoral system.

Political Party Funding Act under scrutiny:

Maimane says the Political Funding Act in its current form only makes allowance for political parties, which has disadvantaged independents in previous local government elections.

“One of the key limitations about why independents have not done well in the past is because they are financially inhibited not many of them have got money I think the most powerful thing about letting independents to stand. I always say to people in a party you buy one, you get the whole party for free whereas with independents even if people look at the issue of corruption you are dealing with an individual which means you can hold them to account at source and deal with the person.

So I think that we should review the Act. We should give support its in the Constitution it says that every citizen as an individual is entitle to stand for public representation, whereas the electoral act says only a political party can do that,” explained Maimane.

Last yeear, civil society organisations won a historic victory in the Constitutional Court, which opened the way for independent candidates to now also run for provincial and national elections.

Call for new electoral system to meet needs of a changing nation: