DR. MALAN EXPECTS ANEWMANDAIE

Wanganui Chronicle, 17 February 1949, Page 6

DR. MALAN EXPECTS ANEWMANDAIE

PROVINCIAL ELECTIONS IN S. AFRICA NEXT MONTH

Doctor Malan hats announced that he will expect from voters in the Provincial Council elections in March a mandate to carry out his paratheid (racial segregation) policy. This announcement has given unusual importance to the elections which begin on March 9. 302 candidates have been nominated for 171 seats in 'four provinces of the Union. The Afrikaner Party led by Finance Minister, N. C. Havenga, on whom Doctor Malan’s Nationalist Party depend for their Parliamentary majority, have announced that they will not contest the elections because of disagreement with the Nationalists on the allocation of seats. The Provincial Councils are independent bodies responsible for education, health, roads. The elections are always run on party lines but questions of national policy are not usually involved at the dissolution of the Provincial Council. In November 1948. General Smuts (United Party) had a large majority in the Transvaal, Natal and the Cape Province. Malan’s Nationalists had a big majority in the Orange Free State. In 43 constituencies candidates will be returned unopposed. In the Cape Province, the United Party claims 12 unopposed returns and the Nationalists opposed returns and the Nationalist Party 50 in the Transvaal. 14 United Party candidates and two Nationalists are unopposed. Natal’s unopposed nominations are all United Party. Nationalists will carry two Orange Free State seats without a fight. Nationalists and the United Party will have straight fights in most of the remaining 128 constituencies —in the Cape Province 50, in the Transvaal 17, in Natal 23, in the Orange Free State. Nine Labour Party candidates have been nominated there are 13 Independents. The elections will determine the extent of popular support for Doctor Malan’s proposal to alter by simple majority the clauses in the Union Constitution govererning voting rights of non-Europeans. This course of action is apparently legal but General Smuts maintains that the Government has a moral duty not to alter these clauses without a two-thirds majority. In both houses Havenga has said that the Government majoritv of 4 in the Assembly is insufficient to change the voting laws.—From a Reuter correspondent at Johannesburg.