South African 2019 Elections: Vote Counting Completed, 23000 Voting Stations Tallied and The Nation Can Now Breath- but only just!

SOUTH AFRICA - In Brief 11 May 2019 by Iraj Abedian

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A few minutes ago, the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) confirmed that the 2019 elections votes are 100% counted, and tallied. The official ceremony later today at 18h00 will be held at the IEC headquarters where the results will be officially confirmed, certified and announced. In the meantime, during the past 24 hours, 27 of smaller parties, the majority of whom are new entrants into the electoral system and a large number of them are in some or other way connected to the Gupta-Zuma-State Capture project, have lodged official challenges to the IEC, and have threatened legal action to interdict the official announcements of the results. In response, the IEC appointed the Statistician General to conduct a random survey of the 23000 voting stations to establish if there were evidences of double counting with material impact on the overall electoral outcome. Earlier today, at midday the Statistician General shared his findings with the IEC Board and the aggrieved parties. No credible and statistically significant wrong doing were found. The IEC refused to succumb to the said parties’ insistence that an independent audit of the entire electoral process had to be carried out before the results were to be announced. Clearly, nearly all of these small and last-minute entrants into the election process failed to secure any voter support. Their bruised egos and their financial backers were left with no other explanation than to justify their evident failures to the “fault lines” of the IEC processes. No doubt for the next few days and weeks, these parties will continue to make noise, even though with no impact whatsoever. There is neither a legal basis nor is there any c...