The Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) has dismissed a staff member who leaked the candidate lists of the African National Congress (ANC) and uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) last week Friday.
The two party’s lists were posted on social media, hours after both parties met the 17:00 IEC deadline to submit the list to the commission to contest this year’s elections.
According to the IEC the staff member downloaded and emailed the list to other people outside the commission.
The employee later deleted the downloads, but it has since been discovered that other party’s list were downloaded too, but never shared on social media.
During a media briefing at the commission’s head office in Centurion yesterday, IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo confirmed that that the unauthorised release of lists was done from a user inside at the commission offices.
“The commission is able to provide a preliminary report as follows, the investigation has narrowed the source of the disclosure to a workstation that has been used to generate and store those reports.
Later the said reports were deleted from the workstation.
Earlier today (Monday), that workstation was secured and imaged in the presence of the official whose credentials were used to generate the reports,” said Mamabolo.
He said a forensic analysis of the computer is underway, and their preliminary investigation show that only one official was responsible for the leakage.
The commission reiterated its regret for the unauthorised disclosure of the list and disclosure of personal information of candidates on those lists, adding that it continues to cooperate with the Information Regulator in this regard.
Despite the leak, the CEO defended the credibility of the commission, adding that they cannot be judged on one incident.
“The credibility of the commission is not dependent on a single factor.
Its an important factor yet not the only determinant of the credibility of the commission,” highlighted Mamabolo.
He added that since the leak, a number of measures have been taken which includes the scaling down of the candidate nomination system access and other measures.
“There’s also heightened awareness created to all staff members.
There’s an investigation that we undertook as we report and corrective action is being taken in terms of the internal processes of the IEC,” explained Mamabolo.
The IEC it will soon publish all the list of nominated candidates.
