By CARIEN DU PLESSIS |and GAYE DAVIS Political Bureau
SELECTING candidates for next year's local government elections will be the first test for the newly forged relationship between the DA and the ID.
Party leaders Helen Zille and Patricia de Lille officially tied the knot yesterday, announcing a phased merger process in terms of which the ID will cease to exist as a separate political entity in 2014, when the next general elections will be held.
The ANC said it wasn't fazed by the move, and invited ID members "outraged by this sell-out act" to join the ruling party.
For now, all ID members will have until September to take out dual membership with the DA, and the party will fight the local government elections under the DA's banner.
A formal merger is possible only in 2014 because floor-crossing is no longer legal and if ID MPs and MPLs were to join the DA now, they would lose their seats.
De Lille and several of her senior party members received DA membership cards yesterday when she and Zille announced the political "marriage".
Party insiders said the selection of candidates to go to the hustings in next year's local government polls would need careful management.
In a joint memorandum of understanding, signed by Zille and De Lille at the Kempton Park Civic Centre yesterday, the ID makes some undertakings about candidates.
The party has undertaken not to "select candidates to stand in by-elections, or campaign independently from the DA".
However, issues could arise when the parties have to decide which of their representatives to put forward as candidates for councillors.
This holds especially true in areas where the ID and the DA enjoy close to equal amounts of support.
The memorandum states that the ID and the DA will agree on a procedure to select ID candidates for local government elections.
It also says that should the ID feels that any of its candidates have been unfairly excluded by the DA's electoral college, De Lille will have the opportunity to explain to the body why she feels the candidate should be selected.
"That is where the controversy could be," a DA insider said yesterday.
"We have built (this mechanism) into (the memorandum) so that we can interview ID candidates and deal with |this on a case-to-case basis," the source told the Cape Argus soon after the announcement of a merger was made.