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ECN again blackballs NSHR after court order
ELECTION observers of the National Society for Human Rights had their accreditation as observers withdrawn for a second time by the Electoral Commission of Namibia on Saturday – only a day after the High Court had overturned a previous ECN decision to withdraw the NSHR’s poll observer status.
An urgent application that the NSHR filed against the ECN in the High Court in Windhoek on Thursday resulted in an order that was given by Acting Judge Marlene Tommasi on Friday morning. In the order, the ECN’s decision to cancel the NSHR’s status as an accredited elections observer was set aside. The ECN was also ordered to inform all polling stations of the court’s ruling.
The ECN was further ordered to pay the NSHR’s legal costs in the matter.
On Saturday, however, the ECN once more cancelled the NSHR’s elections observer accreditation.
“For us that is contempt of court and we are going to have it nullified in a court,” NSHR Executive Director Phil ya Nangoloh said later on Saturday. He said the NSHR would also lay a charge of contempt of court against ECN Chairperson Victor Tonchi.
The human rights organisation launched the urgent application against the ECN after Tonchi informed the NSHR in a letter on Sunday last week that it was withdrawing the NSHR’s election observer accreditation.
In the letter, Tonchi accused the NSHR of “deliberate attempts to mislead the public and cast doubt over the rights and eligibility of some Namibian citizen to vote (sic)”.
He also accused the NSHR of having shown that the organisation “can no longer be seen as credible, fair, transparent, honest and objective observer of the elections”.
The ECN’s decision to withdraw the election observer status it had issued to the NSHR on November 9 – after inviting the NSHR to observe the elections – came after the NSHR had questioned the correctness and legality of the voters’ roll and the registration of voters in the run-up to the elections.
In the case that the NSHR filed against the ECN, Ya Nangoloh stated in an affidavit that the ECN had failed to give his organisation a chance to be heard before the decision affecting its observer status was taken. That was not only against the Constitution and its guarantee of administrative fairness, but also against the Electoral Act, which states that an election observer status can be cancelled or suspended after the ECN had given the observer involved an opportunity to be heard.
After the court order was given on Friday, Tonchi told the media that the ECN would comply with the court’s ruling.
By Friday afternoon, however, the ECN had a letter delivered to the NSHR head office in Windhoek to invite the organisation to a hearing at the Election Results Centre in Windhoek at 09h00 the next morning.
The hearing was to be on the NSHR’s election observer accreditation.
When the organisation did not attend the hearing, the ECN again decided to cancel its accreditation. The effect of this was that no NSHR officials were allowed to enter polling stations, counting venues and the Elections Results Centre any more.
“The only apparent reason for the ECN to exclude NSHR is the fact that NSHR is in the best position to ensure that the voting process is transparent and to expose any and all possible illegal acts including vote rigging by either the ECN or its friends,” Ya Nangoloh charged in a statement that the NSHR issued on Saturday.
He added that the withdrawal of the NSHR’s observer status was “capricious”, “vexatious” and “frivolous”, as well as an abuse of power.
Tonchi told the media on Saturday that the ECN decided to again cancel the NSHR’s accreditation after the High Court did not make a ruling on the merits of the earlier decision to cancel the observer status. With the urgent application the ECN conceded that it had not offered the NSHR an opportunity to be heard before the first decision to cancel its observer status was taken, Tonchi said.
The NSHR has about 80 observers deployed throughout Namibia, Ya Nangoloh said. He said they were under instructions to continue to monitor the posting of election results outside polling stations.
