10 Mar 2019

Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) office in Tutume is said to be receiving an influx of people wanting to register as independent candidates for the coming general elections.

Speaking at the party liaison committee meeting for Nkange constituency in Tutume on recently, principal elections officer, Ms Basadi Ntshotelang said for one to register as an independent candidate, they should have registered for the elections.

Also, she said such persons should apply to the secretary of the commission.

She further said they should also provide in their application their symbol and at least three colours, which only one would be chosen for them to be identified with.

Upon receiving a response from the IEC, she said the prospective candidate would then have to bring the approval letter to their offices to be included in nomination of candidates for the elections.

Ms Ntshotelang also urged prospective candidates and the political parties at large to encourage their electorates to register for the coming elections in the remaining three weeks of supplementary registration.

She said Nkange constituency had registered only 413 electorates for the supplementary period and the number takes the total of registered people to 16 290.

She further pointed out that nationally only 22 236 had registered during the period.

Thus, she said the numbers were still far behind from the commission’s national target of over 1.5 million people adding that latest statistics indicated that they had just surpassed half their target with the number of people having registered standing at about 773 066.

Meanwhile, political parties’ representatives said in future, supplementary registration should be scrapped off because they had since realised that a lot of voter trafficking takes place during the time.

They said prospective candidates traffic people to their wards and constituencies so that they could have a good number of voters.  

Furthermore, they suggested that the voters roll should be updated constantly and issued so that they could inspect it rather than wait for the time when IEC issues it. ENDS