Pretoria - Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa has praised the Electoral Commission of South Africa for its integrity in conducting the 2016 Municipal Elections, and thanked South Africans for exercising their democratic right to vote.
He briefly spoke to media on Friday at the National Results Operations Centre (ROC) in Pretoria were the counting of votes still continues. He had been on a tour of the centre, led by the IEC’s executive.
“I am hugely impressed with the operation that has been set up here. This, in my view, is a world-class type of election structure operation and I think it’s the golden standard of how an election should be run.
“The facilities here are, in my view, one of the most impressive. I can see that everything just fits in like a hand fits in a glove,” said the Deputy President.
Deputy President Ramaphosa acknowledged the IEC for the efficient way it has organised the elections, which he described as a mammoth task.
“To have more than 200 000 people working for the Commission on a temporary basis throughout the length and the breadth of the country, and doing something similar in real time, is something absolutely unimaginable but they have done it.
“To be able to deal with 63 000 result slips that are coming in is also a formidable task … the IEC needs to be given praise for the way in which they have been running this election,” said the Deputy President.
He was particularly heartened by the way in which the IEC has dealt with issues of discipline, such as in KwaZulu-Natal where IEC officials were involved in an untoward act of influencing voters during the elections.
He was satisfied that the IEC swiftly dealt with the matter.
“I thought that that confirmed the integrity of the Commission. It is something that we as South Africans need to be grateful for - we have a Commission that has absolute integrity.”
The Deputy President added that he believed the IEC would never do anything intentional to derail democracy or undermine the will of the people who are expressing it through their vote.
He also thanked South Africans who have spoken by voting through the channel provided by the IEC. He thanked the media for sharing stories with citizens. - SAnews.gov.za
