The EFF rejects the ANC recommendation of its political deployee Mr V Mashinini to be appointed at the IEC as a Commissioner

03 March 2015

The Economic Freedom Fighters rejects the recommendation of Mr. V Mashinini to be appointed at the IEC as a commissioner in replacement of Pansy Tlakula. The EFF rejects Mashinini because he is a deployee of Luthuli House. He was previously a special and personal adviser to President Jacob Zuma, which casts on him a permanent shadow of doubt on his ability to preside in a free and fair manner over the elections.

The EFF further rejects the recommendation on the basis that his appointment will result in four men being in the commission, without any woman; that even if the next appointment will be a woman, there will still be a single position occupied by a woman following the resignation of Reinette Taljaard.

The South African IEC has enjoyed a great gender spread in all its years, with woman at its helm as chairs since 1999. Of all the eight names forwarded by the committee chaired by the Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng, the name of Mashinini stood amongst exceptionally capable women. To undo this, is a move backward in country that will probably elect a man into presidency again in 2019.

The ANC has once more proven that it does not understand democracy, in particular multiparty democracy whose legitimacy always relies on all participant parties having confidence on the IEC. Instead, the ANC uses, not majority democratic rule, but the tyranny of the majority to impose a deployee that all opposition parties have objected to and rejected as illegitimate.

The EFF will explore the possibility of challenging this recommendation of Mashinini who will probably be chair of IEC through a court of law. It cannot be, that given the opportunity to find consensus, the ANC chose a partisan route, only to impose a man whose very starting point is to trump on the public's confidence on the IEC.

Statement issued by the Economic Freedom Fighters, March 3 2015

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