The Freedom Advocacy Network (FAN) has told MPs that while it welcomes changes in electoral law to allow independents to stand in national and provincial elections, flaws in the newly table Electoral Amendment Bill make it ‘detrimental to our representative democracy’.
FAN said in a statement that the Bill proposes a system where votes cast for an independent candidate ‘would not count the same as a vote for a political party’.
‘Consequently, the Bill would lead to a great amount of wasted votes and grossly offend the notion of one person, one vote, which is a central tenet of our constitutional democracy.’
Said FAN director Hermann Pretorius: ‘Electoral reform in South Africa is desperately needed as a matter of urgency. However, the Bill simply does not provide the solution to the problems that our current electoral system faces. It does not adequately provide for proportional representation, and it would inevitably lead to illogical outcomes that discriminate against independent candidates and their supporters.’
FAN said that what was needed was ‘a simple and easy-to-understand system that addresses the concerning trend of electoral disillusionment in South Africa’.
[Image: Janek Szymanowski, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28557513]]