Deputy President Thabo Mbeki has stepped in to address deep concerns about the state of preparations for elections next year and to assess demands from the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) for hundreds of millions of rands in extra funds.
Mbeki and Mandla Mchunu, the chief electoral officer, were due to meet on Friday to go through the commission’s request for more money. Mbeki’s hands-on involvement follows a crisis meeting in Cape Town on Wednesday involving himself, Minister of Finance Trevor Manuel, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Lindiwe Sisulu, IEC chair Judge Johan Kriegler, Mchunu and three other IEC commissioners.
The government has been disturbed at reports of administrative difficulties and conflicts in the commission. But the focus of Wednesday’s meeting was to discuss the IEC’s request for an additional R230-million this year. The IEC says it needs the extra money — on top of the R640-million it has already received this financial year — to complete the new electronic voters’ roll for general and provincial elections due on a date still to be decided between May and July next year.
The government budget process for this financial year is, however, closed. This means innovative accounting may be necessary if Mbeki decides the IEC should receive more funds this year. A senior government representative told the Mail & Guardian that the government has been astonished at the scale of the budgets submitted to it by the IEC and mystified at the amounts requested under some headings, but declined to confirm details of the IEC’s budget negotiations with the government in the possession of the M&G.
The government representative said: “Some of us feel the commission is trying to hold a gun to our heads. They seem to be saying: “If the elections next year are chaotic, we will blame it on you for not giving us more money.’ “Government cannot allow itself to be blackmailed in this way.”
But Mchunu, speaking for the IEC, said on Thursday: “It is important to dispel notions like that. The process we are now undertaking with the deputy president will see to that … I am going to be sitting down with the deputy president … and going through our budget line by line with him. “It is important to break away from the view of the IEC as the requester and the government being the granter.
The election is a government responsibility. We are merely the agency which carries it out. “We are moving towards some kind of joint understanding and solution. We are all treating it as a matter of urgency,” Mchunu added. Government sources said this week that they, too, had heard of conflicts at the IEC harming its ability to fulfil its task.
Employees at the commission have told the M&G that the IEC’s already limited organisational capacity has been seriously undermined by personality conflicts between senior officials. These conflicts have harmed staff morale, and weakened and, at times, delayed decision-making and implementation. Mchunu responded yesterday that it would be surprising if there were not tensions in an organisation like the IEC overseeing elections in a country undergoing rapid transformation.
“There are tensions, but we will manage them. But there is no tension that is preventing proper management,” Mchunu said. Details of IEC budget requests in the M&G‘s possession show that, in January this year, the commission asked the government for R965-million for this financial year (R325- million more than it was eventually given), R969-million next year, and R278-million in 2000/1.
In this three-year budget submission, the IEC estimated that its temporary personnel costs alone for this year’s registration of voters would be R458-million. This excludes another R71-million it requested to pay for the electronic equipment needed to read new bar- coded identity documents.
The commission said the cost of its permanent staff for this year was an additional R51-million. The commission’s budget submission also said training temporary personnel for the registration process this year would cost a further R43-million and the training of polling officials for the election itself next year would cost another R132-million.
In budget negotiations with the commission, the government is understood to have been pushing for the use of civil servants for the registration process. Government calculations are that, if civil servants were used and paid an additional subsistence and transport allowance for their work, personnel costs for the election would be a small fraction of that proposed by the IEC.
The government also argued that using civil servants to staff the election would ensure that, to a very large extent, whatever capacity was developed in the registration process and next year’s election would be available for use in subsequent elections. This would improve continuity and cut future training costs.
But the commission argued that using civil servants would compromise its independence. The government rejoinder was that the commission’s job is to ensure that the elections are free and fair — not to concern itself with the ideal of impartiality down to every last detail.
“In any case,” said the government representative, “what is to guarantee that those employed from outside will be any more impartial than civil servants would be? Civil servants have the advantage of having employment histories and records of performance.”