More than 30 civil society organizations have written to Parliament calling for an immediate review of the Electoral Amendment Bill being introduced in Parliament on Thursday (October 20).
Groups including Undo Tax Abuse (Outa), Build One South Africa and Solidarity said the bill was based solely on minority opinions expressed by Home Secretary Aaron Motsoaledi, and if passed, will disqualify you from voting. significantly.
“The foundation of our electoral system rests on a long tradition of liberation struggles that call for ‘one man, one vote equal’.
The group said the changes Changes to the electoral system stem from the decision of the most influential court in South Africa, the Constitutional Court, in which the New Movement NPC and Other v President of the Republic of South Africa in 2020 gave Parliament 24 months to amend the electoral law to allow independent candidates to stand in national and provincial elections – this deadline has expired
Parliament has been instructed to reform the law to allow individual candidates running for ical political offices without affiliation with a particular political party. The “possible solution” currently being worked out by parliament is under pressure.
The case gave rise to two opposing opinions, majority and minority, the latter of which was the basis of the new amendments.
Majority View
“Majority view holds that South Africa adopts a mixed electoral system, with 200 seats in the National Assembly being voted directly from single-member constituencies and 200 remaining seats. is again determined from the list of proportional representation, as it involves local government with a 50/50 allocation of seats.
This view that it would provide fairness to individual candidates and satisfy the constitutional requirement for an electoral system that would lead to overall proportionality of the results, the group said.
Minority View
This view, later invoked, adopts a “minimalist approach” to include such candidates.
It identifies entire provinces as constituencies and forces independent candidates to compete against political parties – not individuals representing a party – because it is the “It’s a system that doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world and is clearly ill-suited to allowing independent candidates to stand fairly in elections.”
Tough Task
Cliffe Dekker Hofmeyr legal experts say Congress has a fragile task ahead, noting the following example:
“If the general election comes, there will be 20 million registered voters; and that a well-known individual running for office has the mandate of two million voters, it is impossible that even with 10% of the registered voters, that individual will receive only one seat in the legislative body. which he introduced himself. Such an outcome would be extremely unfair and disenfranchised.
Parliament has chosen to settle the issue of independent representation solely on the principle of proportional representation; however, a mixed approach that incorporates both single-member districts and proportional representation would be more suitable for groups opposed to the system.
Independent candidates, under the measure, are required to have a signature percentage from their constituency to indicate their level of support. However, political parties are not required to do so.
Under the currently proposed amendment, if a seat is worth 44,000 votes, then 20% of the 44,000 voters will be required to sign, or 8,800 signatures. Political parties only need a constitution and 1,000 registered voters for Congress.
membership level.
