The leader of the Democratic Alliance, Tony Leon, was unperturbed by reporters’ questions about the apparent success of the Independent Democrats in the preliminary election results released on Thursday.
”If they [the ID] were expecting to be the official opposition, they won’t get that,” was his answer to questions about the ID’s electoral support.
”I once led a 2% party,” he continued, glancing up at an election results board above him: ”It’s a lot bigger now.”
”However, the more the merrier,” he added.
During a brief appearance at the Independent Electoral Commission results operation centre in Pretoria, he was surrounded by throngs of journalists — in sharp contrast to Bantu Holomisa’s unheralded visit to the United Democratic Movement table earlier in the day.
Leon said DA’s performance so far in the election was ”good news for the country”.
”We are a bigger party this time. Already we have double the number of seats. We are the second-largest party in eight of the nine provinces.”
The DA’s position has been steadily changing during the day. Early in the morning, it had more than 20% of the votes counted, but by 4.30pm this had dropped to just more than 14%.
However, Leon was still upbeat. He said the DA had defied predictions, and that the coalition’s chances in KwaZulu-Natal were looking very good.
”We [the Inkatha Freedom Party and the DA] are getting close to what we were talking about.”
He added the DA had been realistic in its election predictions.
Patricia de Lille, leader of the ID, had reportedly expected 10% at one point in the election run-up, and the United Christian Democratic Party was still predicting it would get 15% to 20% of the national votes on Wednesday.
Joe Seremane, chairperson of the DA, was also confident.
”This [the results so far] is just a step to the next phase, where we will be an alternative government.”
He said his party was as important as the people who were voting for them: ”If you ignore us, you are ignoring a large part of the electorate.”
Seremane said he felt the DA would succeed in its aim of broadening its support base. — Sapa