Johannesburg  - South Africa's new political party, the Congress of the People (COPE), began its inaugural conference Sunday with promises to reform the electoral system and improve public services if victorious in next year's general elections.

COPE was founded by a group of former members of the ruling African National Congress, who quit the party after the ANC dumped Thabo Mbeki as president in September.

At its three-day conference in the southern city of Bloemfontein, thousands of COPE delegates, led by firebrand former ANC chairman Mosiuoa Lekota, are expected to hammer out a party manifesto. Bloemfontein, capital of Free State province, is also where the ANC was founded nearly 100 years ago, in 1912.

COPE spokesman Philip Dexter said Sunday the the party's foremost priority were changing the electoral system. COPE is calling for the president, provincial premiers and mayors to be directly elected.

The ANC, as the ruling party, currently fills those posts. Politicians that run afoul of the party leadership are soon replaced.

Dexter said COPE would also improve the quality of public services, revamp industrial policy to drive growth and step up the fight against crime by reviving an elite crime-fighting unit that the ANC dissolved for political reasons.

The party goes into the convention fortified by success in a series of municipal by-elections last week in Western Cape province. COPE candidates, who ran as independents because the ANC challenged the party name in court, took 10 out of 27 councillor posts, against three for the ANC. The result is not indicative of COPE's standing nationwide, however. The ANC's support has always been soft in the Western Cape.

COPE claims to have around nearly half a million members since it burst onto the scene in October. The ANC officially has around 600,000.

The ANC has been rattled by the emergence of COPE, which, although given little hope of defeating the hegemonic ex-liberation movement, threatens to dent the party's more-than-two-thirds majority in parliament.

Some South Africans, who balked in the past at voting against the ANC because it gave the country its freedom, say they would consider voting for COPE.

COPE leaders say the ANC under new leader Jacob Zuma is corrupt, disregards the rule of law and divisive.

The ANC for its part says COPE's leaders are merely sore losers, because they were on the losing side when Zuma trounced Mbeki for the party leadership last year. (dpa)