Now that the election date has been announced the Independent Electoral Commission plans to gather the party national liaison committee this week to discuss voting details, said the IEC on Monday.
The committee, consisting of representatives of parties from the National Assembly will jointly decide when to announce voters rolls, voting stations, and deadlines for oversees registration, said the chief electoral officer, said Advocate Pansy Tlakula.
She cautioned however that time for those still wanting to register was fast running out.
The election date is to be gazetted on February 11, meaning that the voters roll would be close at midnight on February 11, another spokesperson told Sapa on Monday night.
Therefore those who have still not registered have until 5pm on February 11.
Tlakula explained that after this deadline all the information from the various offices would be downloaded and transmitted to the head office in Pretoria from where the official voters role would be drawn up.
But for Tlakula, the voters roll is not her only concern. The IEC has a permanent work force of just under 200 people. This figure rockets to 250 000 for the three days covering the election date.
”All those people have to be screened, trained and paid,” she said.
Tlakula said that from these, 34 000 had to ”suddenly become legal experts”.
These would be appointed as presiding and deputy presiding officers for the various polling stations.
”They are not lawyers but will have to deal with complex legal issues on their own when people ask them questions or when difficult situations arise at the polling stations,” she explained.
The IEC said it would also now be monitoring the different parties more closely as they prepared for the elections.
Currently there are 139 registered parties which will compete for votes on national, provincial and municipal levels. This number has increased from the 1999 total of 79 parties.
Each party will in the next few weeks have to fork out thousands of rands in deposits to be eligible to contest various seats.
A deposit of R150 000 is required for a party wishing to contest a national seat and R30 000 for parties contesting provincial seats.
”Only if they win a seat to they get their money back,” said Tlakula who added that if they do not it was just ”too bad.”
Tlakula said that this time round she was hoping to provide better trained staff than in the 1999 elections and also wanted to step up the voter education drive.
”It’s all about deadlines but we are ready,” she said. – Sapa