At the deadline yesterday a total of 34 political parties have shown their intention to contest the election on May 8. The IEC gave them time till 17:00 yesterday to pay their deposits and to submit candidate lists.
The IEC will now sift through the parties to establish whether they are compliant with the law and IEC principles and then set March 25 as the final return for queries for parties and nominated candidates.
Most of these parties will fall along the way as the election campaign picks up speed. There is no place to hide for facebook parties, opportunists and clowns – from now on it is hard politics under scrutiny.
It is doubtful whether more than 13 parties will eventually make it to Parliament; in fact, the number may for the first time since 1994 drop to less than 12. It is not so easy to draw 50 000 for a seat in Parliament as it looks from the comfort from a computer chair.
Only a day after the deadline the first shots are
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