2nd round of Alex CPF elections go smoothly
ALEXANDRA - The previous disruptions of the elective meeting of the Alex Community Police Forum were managed with the participation of the independent Electoral Commission.
Unlike the previous disruptions seen at the elective meeting of the Alex Community Policing Forum, this time they were managed with the participation of the Independent Electoral Commission.
Alex Police Station commander Colonel Nhluvuko Zondi said she had called in the commission to oversee the elections following the disruptions which led to the cancellation of the July elections.
“I decided I was not going to have any of that previous anarchy at all and I called in the commission this time around,” said Zondi, who also thanked the outgoing executive for ‘a great job, though it had its own challenges which I think were not a train smash’.
Daina Mola, the commission’s outreach and training officer who acted as the presiding officer at the forum’s elections, declared the voting process ‘as not just free and fair, but as very credible’.
“We’re mandated by the Constitution to conduct parliamentary and local government elections, but there is also a legislative framework that allows us to conduct what is called institutional elections such as these of the Alex Community Policing Forum,” Mola said.
However, the meeting was almost derailed when opposing factions within the forum sought to go at each other when the outgoing chairperson, Bulldog Rathokolo, delivered the chairperson’s report which was later described by James Khumalo from the Department of Community Safety, as more of a personal attack on certain individuals than a forum’s operational report.
After peace brokering, Khumalo ordered that a meeting of the forum be called later where the outgoing chairperson was ordered to table a reworked report for adoption.
Three out of four sector delegates refused to adopt the report and described it as ‘lacking in substance and failing to account for the operational expenditure’.
A number of forum executives had either been dismissed for missing meetings or resigned due to internal squabbles which had also impacted on the operational capacity of the forum.
Among those relieved of their duties was forum treasurer David Khumalo, who was dismissed for missing meetings and for what Rathokolo described as conflict of interests in that Khumalo was also the chairperson of the Alexandra Residents’ Association.