WORLD Panel: Election in S. Africa was fair

The president will be elected next week.
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- South Africa's election was free and fair, the Independent Electoral Commission said Saturday as it presented the results of the vote to President Thabo Mbeki, whose African National Congress handily won the poll.
Commission chairwoman Brigalia Bam praised all the parties that participated in the country's third all-race elections, who she said "really and truly played it to the book."
"It gives me a great pleasure to formally declare the results of the 2004 elections as being credible, free and fair," she said to applause from assembled party representatives.
Mbeki's African National Congress, which led South Africa out of apartheid, scored its most decisive victory in a decade Wednesday. With 69.68 of the national vote, it picked up 270 of the National Assembly's 400 seats, compared to 50 seats for its nearest rival, the white-led Democratic Alliance.
The New National Party, heir to the party that gave South Africa close to half a century of white-minority rule, won just seven seats.
New assembly to convene
The new National Assembly convenes next week to elect the president, certain to be Mbeki. The nine provincial assemblies must also meet to select delegates to the 90-member National Council of Provinces, parliament's second chamber.
The new president will be sworn in April 27, the day South Africa celebrates a decade of multiracial democracy.
The ANC also led votes for nine provincial assemblies, though in two provinces it will have to form coalitions to govern.
"This week's general elections, our third national and provincial democratic elections, have served as a tribute and a climax to what we have achieved in the last 10 years to consolidate democracy in our country," Mbeki said.
More than 76 percent of the 20.6 million registered voters cast ballots Wednesday. That is a drop from the 89-percent turnout in 1999, but significantly higher than is typical in more established democracies.
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