/ 12 March 2009

DA to propose new expat voting law

Having, alongside other opposition parties, won the greater part of what it went to court for in the first place, the Democratic Alliance (DA) is now planning to bring forward new legislative proposals to clean up the whole business of the rights of South Africans abroad to vote in South African elections.

James Selfe, the chairperson of the party’s federal executive, said on Thursday after the Constitutional Court judgement was given, that there were still many undesirable aspects of the law.

”For example,” he told a media briefing in Parliament, ”if you are living in Vladivostok and want to vote in the election, you have to go all the way to Moscow to the embassy to cast your ballot.”

There is also still outstanding the contestation over the right to vote in provincial elections.

The judgement given by Justice Kate O’Regan on Thursday morning only allows voting in national elections.

She declined to treat the provincial ballot as a matter of urgency, but instead told the parties that they are free to argue the case in the regular way.

But in the meantime the DA and other parties are busy putting their electoral machinery overseas into gear, to encourage South Africans to apply for special voting rights (they have been given until March 27 to do so) and to turn up to take part.

According to Selfe, the majority of the expressions of interest in voting overseas came from the United Kingdom, and his party now has to decide how much effort they want to make there. It is likely that some leading members of the party will go to the UK to drum up support.

”Given the fact that we have been approached by in excess of 20 000 people living abroad regarding their right to vote,” Selfe said, ”we are confident that South African citizens living overseas will come out in their numbers to help strengthen and protect South Africa’s democracy.”

He added that to judge from the traffic on the DA website, he would suggest that the DA would benefit differentially over the other parties.

He also noted that the judges have stricken from the law, and from the electoral regulations based on it, the insistence that South Africans must be only temporarily abroad in order to vote. It is a rare example of the judges crossing the line between the judicial and legislative sectors of the constitutional order. — I-Net Bridge