Candidate lists finalised

By Khanyisa Tabata
12 April 2011

The Independent Electoral Commission has appealed to members of the public who are registered to vote in the local government elections on the 18th of May, but cannot make it to the polling stations, to submit their applications for special votes.

IEC chief electoral officer, Pansy Tlakula told a news conference in Centurion that applications must be in before the 3rd of May.

Tlakula says the IEC has now finalised its list of candidates for the election.

She says however that there has only been a slight increase in the number of female candidates. Tlakula expressed her disappointment.

She said there were unfortunately a large number of nominations which did not meet requirements in this occasion than in 2006 when 932 candidates were disqualified.

Tlakula said only the ANC will be contesting all 278 municipal elections. The DA will be contesting 272 municipalities and COPE will contest 214.

She also said that the ward ballot papers with the most candidates are wards 24 in Bishop Lavis and 79 Beacon Value / Eastridge in Cape Town that have 24 candidates each. She said that Cape Town also took the trophy of having the longest party proportional list ballot paper with 32 parties participating.