The Democratic Alliance’s complaint that the Government Communication and Information System’s (GCIS) publishing of the government’s Ten Year Review was electioneering is likely to fail, the GCIS said on Thursday.
The GCIS said the DA made a similar complaint before the 1999 elections and failed.
”Out of respect for the Independent Electoral Commission [IEC] and the public protector to which the DA has addressed its complaints, we would not want to engage in this kind of public debate with a party involved in the electoral contest, and we will therefore respond formally to any correspondence addressed to us by the IEC or public protector,” the government communicator said.
”We would however, in the interests of clarity, wish to point out that the Ten Year Review process was conducted not by [the] GCIS but by the policy, coordination and advisory services in the presidency, under the direction of [the] Cabinet.”
The GCIS said the DA had made a similar complaint some weeks ago to which it had responded by saying that it had a responsibility to ensure that the contents of the president’s State of the Nation address were disseminated as widely as possible.
The DA said the document, published as a newspaper supplement, promoted African National Congress interests at taxpayers’ expense.
In a statement on Thursday, DA election spokesperson Douglas Gibson said he would also send a complaint to the public protector about the broader issue of using government advertising to promote party-political interests.
”This supplement was published and distributed after the election date was proclaimed. In view of the coming election, it is crucial that the IEC make a speedy ruling in this regard.
”We [estimate] that the supplement, which focuses on 10 years of democracy and was published in Sunday newspapers, cost in excess of R5-million,” Gibson said.
The DA felt its complaint was substantiated by a number of similarities between the ANC election manifesto and the GCIS supplement, ”leading to the conclusion that the advertisement is a rehash of the manifesto”.
”In fact, it is hard to come to any conclusion other than that the entire GCIS Ten Year Review project was nothing more than the pre-production research for the ANC’s election manifesto — all at taxpayers’ expense,” he said.
This constituted a clear violation of a number of regulations, and was an unfair and excessive use of public money, to which no opposition party had access.
Among other things, it was a violation of the Public Service Act, which states that no ”officer or employee of the government may draw up or publish any writing or deliver a public speech to promote or prejudice the interest of any political party”. — Sapa