‘A sinking feeling’ as results start trickling in: FF+ rejects coalition with the ANC

Freedom Front Plus (FF+) head of elections Wouter Wessels has described the nervous wait for results as a “sinking feeling”.

Wessels has spent long hours at the IEC’s Results Operations Centre (Roc), monitoring the leader board and interacting with other political parties.

Nervous wait for results

Some analysts have said the Roc floor will become the stage for unofficial coalition talks between parties.

Over the years the FF+ has took a significant number of votes from the DA, which was seen as deviating from the interests of Afrikaner voters. The party has grown significantly since the last elections in 2019.

“We do not know what is going to happen. You can have a feel outside but at the end of the day what counts is what happens on that board up there,” said Wessels.

According to Wessels, it was still early to predict how the new government of South Africa will look after the results are announced.

He reiterated that the FF+ will never go into a coalition with the ANC and the EFF.

“We are very clear that we are not going to get into a coalition with the ANC and the EFF because the ANC got many chances to govern and went in the wrong direction. We cannot enable them to govern further,” he said.

Wessels said should the DA go into a coalition with the ANC, they would get punished by their electorate.

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He said he believed that many FF+ supporters had turned up to vote in huge numbers but he expressed disappointment with how the elections had been run.

“We are very worried about a lot of technical problems that are occurring. A lot of polling stations were offline and people were turned away. Very unfortunate,” he said.

Despite the concerns, Wessels said he enjoys the banter on the Roc floor with the different leaders of political parties.

“We get along quite well all of us, especially a lot of the returning people with each election year. We also serve on the national committee of the IEC together,” he said. 

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