The African National Congress is slipping through the gaps left by the fighting between the Freedom Front Plus and the Democratic Alliance, FF+ leader Pieter Mulder said on Wednesday.
”It really angers me. All of our campaigning has been aimed at the ANC, but with the DA playing confusing politics and threatening voters to vote for them, we have to defend ourselves,” he said.
The DA has said in national broadcasts and on election posters that voting for the FF+ would ”split the opposition and give more power to the ANC”.
The DA is not only misleading voters by creating the impression that a vote for the FF+ would help the ANC, but it also undermines the constitutional principles of proportional representation and multiparty democracy, Mulder said.
The FF+ was forced to find campaign funds to make new radio advertisements to assure its supporters that their votes would not be wasted.
”If we were really so small as the DA want everyone to believe, why have they turned all their big guns at us in the last week?” Mulder asked.
He was speaking shortly after a visit to the University of Pretoria campus where he spoke to FF+ student volunteers who were encouraging other students to vote in next week’s municipal government election.
Mulder also had informal discussions with vice-chancellor and principal Calie Pistorius.
The FF+ has won most of the seats on the student representative council on the university campus over the past few years, but the university last year moved to disallow political parties on campus.
”We need to find a balance and it needs to be managed, but you cannot totally remove politics from student life,” Mulder said. — Sapa