Bantu Holomisa of the United Democratic Movement has called for an urgent review of the current electoral system - which he says will enable the ANC to elect Jacob Zuma as the next president.

"We must campaign for electoral reform so that the election of the president of this country can happen in the public domain, instead of being confined to the ANC," he said yesterday at a conference on floor-crossing.

He said it has been a foregone conclusion since 2004 that Zuma would be the next president, irrespective of the ruling in the Schabir Shaik trial.

Holomisa said the ruling party had refused to consider a constituency-based electoral system, where floor-crossings would "trigger" by-elections.

But ANC parliamentary whip Michael Masutha said floor-crossing "created a space for public representatives to reflect the underlying political shifts that may have emerged during an election".

The opposition parties united in their plea for the government to amend the floor-crossing legislation, first implemented in 2002. DA leader Tony Leon said that while the principle of floor-crossing "was not wrong", the current legislation was "a perversion of an original mandate" proposed by the DA in 2000.

By rewording the threshhold requirement, the ANC ensured that representatives wanting to move to another party needed to cross over with at least 10% of their party.

The DA had called for a 10% threshhold of representatives who wanted to form a new political party. Leon said this made it easier for smaller parties to join the ANC, as ANC representatives would need the support of 28 other members before they could defect.

Both the DA and IFP have submitted private members' bills calling for the scrapping of the legislation.

With acknowledgement to Anél Powell and Cape Times.