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- obligation (whether formal or informal) to engage in conduct in accordance with the directions, instructions or wishes of a foreign principal or, where the foreign principal is a corporation, of the directors of the foreign principal.”.
(6) Section 56 of the Presidential Elections Act 1991 is amended by deleting subsection (4) and substituting the following subsection:
- “(4) For the purposes of this section, “donation” has the meaning given by the definition of “political donation” in section 51 of the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act 2021, and a donation is accepted by a candidate or an election agent if it is accepted within the meaning of that Act.”.
(7) The Presidential Elections Act 1991 is amended by inserting, immediately after section 69, the following section:
- “Authorised excuse for non-compliance with section 55A
- 69A.—(1) Where—
- (a) any declaration which is required by section 55A(1) to be given by a candidate at an election in an electoral division to the Returning Officer is not so given within the time delimited under that section, or being given contains a false statement; and
- (b) the candidate applies to an Election Judge or a Judge sitting in the General Division of the High Court and shows that the failure to give the declaration or the false statement in the declaration (as the case may be) has arisen by reason of the candidate’s illness, or by reason of inadvertence or of any reasonable cause of a like nature, and not by reason of any want of good faith on the part of the candidate,
- the Judge may, after notice of the application, and on production of evidence of the grounds stated in the application, and of the good faith of the application, and otherwise, as to the Judge seems fit, and after giving the other candidates, the Returning Officer and any elector within the electoral division an
