Two members of the Multi-Party Charter (MPC) have failed to meet the new signature requirement and will not be standing in the May election.
The Spectrum National Party (SNP) and the Unemployed People’s Movement (UPM) both failed to secure the required number of signatures. The requirement is a new one for political parties which are not represented in the National Assembly or the provincial legislatures.
News24 said that according to the IEC, parties had to secure nearly 50 000 signatures in order to stand in all nine provinces and for the National Assembly.
Christopher Claasen, the leader of the SNP, was quoted as saying: ‘We are not registered at all. We cannot contest nationally or in provinces. The IEC has compelled new parties to get signatures and we did not get over the threshold. We would have liked the IEC to give us more time, maybe the end of March, to get those figures, but we could not. We went to court, but we failed.’
Members of the MPC include the DA, ActionSA, IFP and FF+, among others.
Most polls shows that the MPC would fail to secure a national majority but would form a significant bloc in the National Assembly, with some polls showing the MPC could win more than one-third of the vote.
Polls also show that MPC parties could be the single biggest bloc in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal.
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