Anything goes in mad scramble for power and privilege

The Times Editorial: There is a dangerous pattern of behaviour developing among some of our politicians. If their actions are not nipped in the bud, they are likely to put our country onto the slippery road of no return.

Yesterday the Independent Electoral Commission sounded the alarm about an increase in vote-rigging in this country.

According to the commission, this year alone there have been three attempts to rig by-elections.

Three by-elections in KwaZulu-Natal, and one in Midvaal, in Gauteng, had to be postponed after it emerged that the voters' roll had been compromised.

It emerged yesterday that the IEC had to remove the names of 1534 people from the voters' roll in Vryheid, KwaZulu-Natal, after it was found that they were not eligible to vote in a by-election in that area.

We are told that when the IEC published the names of the disqualified voters and called on them to make representations to the IEC for reinstatement only 11 came forward.

This and similar incidents of voter registration fraud should be a wake-up call.

Voters' rolls must be protected against who want to get into a position of power through the back door. Our electoral commission, which has delivered relatively free and fair elections since the dawn of democracy in 1994, should be given all the support it needs to maintain our electoral integrity.

We fully support the call by IEC chairman Pansy Tlakula that the police investigate fully anyone implicated in electoral fraud.

With elections only a few months away, it is important that the IEC's systems be protected and those found to have tampered with the voters' roll dealt with.

We need to stop these acts of desperation by politicians who want to win at all costs. Or ghosts and people more than 200 years old will determine the outcome of our polls.