The Electoral Court has hit Jacob Zuma’s MKP with a punitive costs order for the withdrawal of its first challenge to the validity of SA’s national elections, weeks after it launched a second application to re-run the vote, according to News24.

‘I am of the view that a punitive costs order is appropriate to dissuade litigants from instituting proceedings and then abruptly abandoning them when unsubstantiated,’ Electoral Court Acting Judge Esther Steyn stated in a ruling delivered on Friday.

While the IEC had asked the court to rule that the MKP could not launch a new election rigging case without convincing the court it had the evidence to do so, Steyn said granting such an order may threaten the MKP’s constitutional right of access to justice.

‘On the papers before me, I am not persuaded that the withdrawal constitutes an abuse of process yet,’ she said.

Steyn nevertheless noted that the MKP’s conduct throughout its urgent legal challenge to the legality of SA’s May elections ‘has been marked by several irregularities’ and constituted ‘a significant departure from normative litigation conduct’.

In these circumstances, she said, ordering the party to pay the IEC's costs on an attorney-client scale was warranted.

The MKP announced it was withdrawing its first legal challenge to the validity of the 29 May general elections, where it alleged that more than 9.3m votes were unaccounted for, after the IEC filed a scathing rebuke of its complete lack of ‘credible and admissible evidence’ for that claim. 

News24 reports that in a new application filed this month, MKP national chairperson Nathi Nhleko said the party had withdrawn its application because its expert witness said he ‘needed more time to scrutinise the election results, particularly in light of the lEC's response and explanation in relation to the downtime experienced during the election’.

This is an apparent reference to the two-hour period that the IEC results board was down, which the commission is adamant had no material impact on the validity of the elections outcome.

‘After extensive consultations with experts and on receipt of their report, we had to deliberate on it with a view to being advised if it presented a credible case for the relief that we seek,’ Nhleko said.

‘We engaged other experts to stress test the approach of our expert and were persuaded that our complaint of serious voter irregularities is justified.

Full News24 report

See also full Mail & Guardian report