Love's comments on eligibility of candidates in polls were not specific to Zuma - IEC

JOHANNESBURG - The Electoral Commission (IEC) said that comments made by Commissioner Janet Love on the eligibility of candidates in the upcoming elections were not specific to former President Jacob Zuma.
 
Zuma's MK Party accused Love of bias after the IEC disqualified him from running for public office on the basis of his 15-month prison sentence for contempt.
 
The IEC's decision was later overturned by the Electoral Court in a matter that is now the subject of an urgent appeal at the Constitutional Court.
 
The IEC has filed papers responding to a directive by the Constitutional Court about Commissioner Love's comments made at a media briefing earlier in the year.
 
The Electoral Court rejected the MK Party and Zuma's argument that Love's comments, in which she said that "the laws of the country that would stand as an impediment" for "anybody who [had] been given a sentence that was not the subject of any deferral", suggested bias on her part.
 
Nonetheless, they persisted with the argument in the Constitutional Court.
 
The IEC said that while the comments came in response to a question about Zuma, Love was "careful in the manner in which she chose her words" and they were in fact about the law.
 
It stresses that "no words in that statement say that Zuma is not eligible" and said "at best" for the former president and MK it "indirectly" suggested or implied it was about him but that this did not meet the test for a reasonable apprehension of bias.
 
A reasonable person, the IEC said further, would simply interpret the statement "as a disclaimer of the personal responsibility of the commissioners if Zuma, or any other candidate, were deemed ineligible to stand in the election".