Civil society feels left out on electoral amendments

THE civil society sector in Namibia feels left out of consultations on the Electoral Amendment Bill, which was tabled in Parliamenton Thursday.

They fear it will just be rubber-stamped because of Swapo’s overwhelming majority in the House.
‘We appeal to our lawmakers to open their ears for the recommendations of civil society. It is unacceptable that the citizens are expected to silently condone this type of one-sided lawmaking. Few processes of governance are potentially as explosive as elections,’ said Carola Engelbrecht of the Nangof Trust Election Coalition (NTEC). Nangof is a forum of non-governmental organisations in Namibia.
‘The current Bill is a disappointing document which we are now confronted with after a frustrating four years of waiting to present our inputs since the Speaker of the National Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab announced in July 2005 that the Electoral Act needed a comprehensive review to avoid court challenges and election recounts.
‘Nothing happened for two years until November 2007, when the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) invited stakeholders to a national consultative workshop. We went there with high expectations only to be disappointed when we realised the workshop was not really tailored to align our Electoral Act with Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union (AU) election guidelines,’ Engelbrecht told reporters yesterday. ‘The workshop merely served the ECN, who dictated what would be discussed and what not. The ECN had a working document which was strictly followed and any burning issues from the side of the stakeholders were ignored.’
Another two years passed by before the Electoral Amendment Bill was tabled, but instead of it being a meaningful total overhaul of the existing law of 1992 it was a patchwork exercise, according to her.
‘NTEC forwarded the outcome of a workshop held in February 2009 with election experts from SADC to the ECN afterwards, but we never received any feedback,’ Engelbrecht criticised. ‘We will however present our concerns to Members of Parliament this week.’
A concern was the restriction for election observers in the new draft amendment, which only allowed for observation of voting, counting of ballots and election result announcements. ‘The entire pre-election phase is excluded. What about voter registration and nomination of (party) candidates?’ Engelbrecht wanted to know.
The draft on the other hand gives unbridled powers to ECN officials and security personnel to order observers around or out. The word ‘any order’ might have to be reconsidered as it needed qualification, according to NTEC.
The Coalition official also pointed out that the ECN had allegedly repeatedly stated that no electronic voting machines would be used in the upcoming 2009 elections, but were now included in the draft amendment.
‘One fails to comprehend, why it is so urgent to include the potential use of these machines at this stage, when the Minister and the ECN repeatedly claim they will not be used in November. Why not wait – the next amendment or total overhaul cannot be so far away?’
Positive improvements in the new Bill were the counting of votes at polling station, but NTEC says it does not confine voting to one day only. ‘Other nations vote, count ballot papers in one day and announce the results the same night – the same should be done in Namibia. If voting will be again be over two days, no one knows what will happen to the ballot boxes overnight, she said.
The Coalition also noticed that the Code of Conduct for political parties, which was first applied in the 1999 elections, had not become part of the Electoral Amendment Bill.
‘The Code of Conduct has been gazetted, but no one seems to know whether it is enforceable in its current form. The ECN has been pleading for it to be part of the Bill, yet it is not. Therefore we are in favour to return to the earliest version of the principal Act of 1992, which required a judge to chair the ECN.’
Other shortcomings in the bill noticed by NTEC were the Central Election Results Centre in Windhoek, which had been set up in the 1999 and 2004 elections, but its purpose had remained a ‘mystery’ and no reference was in the law.
‘Nobody knew what had been done there, how the election results were coming on, added up and finalised – this all remained a secret, there was no transparency. With the counting of results at polling stations this time, is it still necessary to have such a centre, which costs a lot of taxpayers’ money?’ Engelbrecht asked.
She also recommended that the new bill should make provision for a tribunal if political parties disputed election results.
Personal liability of the ECN and its officials should also be included in the amendment in the case of election fraud or rigging detected and proven. ‘So far, officials at the ECN are not held personally accountable for such serious cases and NTEC is of the opinion that this should be changed,’ according to Engelbrecht.
Samson Ndeikwila of the Forum for the Future (FFF), which is an NTEC member, said that the Coalition will call for an official and independent audit of all ballot boxes to establish correct numbers.
‘Recently there were forgotten ballot boxes found at a Windhoek Police station, we don’t know where else ballot boxes are floating around. The numbers of the boxes before and after elections must be the same and that also goes for the numbers printed on those boxes (to avoid rigging)’ Ndeikwila said.