Candidate registration for S.Korean parliament election begins

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, March 31, 2004

Candidate registration for S.Korean parliament election begins

Political aspirants hoping to get into South Korea's National Assembly started to register with the National Election Commission (NEC) on Wednesday, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

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Political aspirants hoping to get into South Korea's National Assembly started to register with the National Election Commission (NEC) on Wednesday, reported South Korean Yonhap News Agency.

The parliament election is to be held on April 15. Since March 12, those wanting to win one of the 299 seats in the 17th legislature have begun limited campaigning as preliminarily registered candidates.

They have to enroll as official candidates with the NEC by Thursday and then can begin full campaigning starting on Friday, according to election law.

According to a preliminary tally by the NEC, 1,300 candidates are likely to register with the election watchdog, a 5-1 rate of competition following a 4.6-1 competition rate in 2000, reported Yonhap.

Those who will run in constituencies have to register at one of the 243 local NEC offices, while candidates who will contend for the 56 proportional representation seats must sign up at the NEC headquarters in Seoul.

Candidates are required to submit documents on their assets, military service records, tax payments and criminal records, if any.

They also must submit publicity materials to the NEC by Sunday,which the commission in turn will post publicly by April 6.

The NEC must fix voter lists by April 8, and send voting guidelines and candidate publicity materials to voters by April 10.

During the official April 2-14 campaign period, candidates can freely campaign. However, the election law bans multiple-candidate debates in constituencies and party-member-only rallies, which hadbeen allowed during previous general elections.

Absentee voting will be conducted on April 9 and 10, and the voting on April 15 will take place at polling stations across the nation.

While with the parliament general election drawing, South Korean government and the NEC urged government officials to maintain neutrality over the election. The NEC also intensified measures to crackdown illegal campaign for the election.

Source: Xinhua

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