ECN ‘won’t address claims’

THE National Society for Human Rights has launched a scathing attack on the integrity of the Electoral Commission of Namibia, three days ahead of Namibia’s watershed election, but the electoral body has opted to reply with silence.

NSHR Executive Director Phil ya Nangoloh told the media yesterday that they would get an urgent court interdict to stop the elections body from banning them as election observers.Ya Nangoloh said they were being punished for proclaiming the truth about a voters’ roll that is allegedly in a shambles with people who were supposed to just get duplicate cards registered twice while many deceased people were also still on the roll.’He is lying (about the duplicate cards). Those people are issued with duplicate cards,’ said a senior official at the ECN, who did not want to be named.ECN spokesperson Rukee Tjingaete said they would not respond to Ya Nangoloh’s claims.’Let him go for a court interdict as he is saying,’ he said when approached to verify whether the people were issued with duplicate cards or new voter’s cards.While attacking the NSHR, the ECN has not addressed the allegations.On Sunday the ECN had said that some information about two constituencies was copied twice on the CD-ROM while one was omitted by mistake, as reflected in the version sent to the political parties.The ECN maintains that the printed version of the voters’ register that was gazetted on November 9 ‘remains absolutely accurate and correct’.’It must also be kept in mind that minimal alterations will be detected on a daily basis at constituency levels as voters who have lost their cards are provided with replacements in areas where they did not originally register,’ the ECN said.At yesterday’s media briefing, the NSHR again displayed documents showing different voter registration numbers of some registered individuals.They were in a ‘dossier’ thicker than a telephone directory and divided into different regions.’The ECN has repeatedly lied to the general public that it is doing its best to ensure a free and fair election in which registered voters will be allowed to vote only once and that a number of mechanisms have been put in place to prevent voters from voting twice,’ Ya Nangoloh said.He claimed that there was also a big possibility that sea-going personnel who voted on November 13 will be able to cast their ballots again because of the absence of a list that contains their names.’ECN must not be accountable to itself, but rather it must be accountable to the general public and to the stakeholders in the electoral process,’ he said.Ya Nangoloh and around 80 others from his organisation have been barred from observing the elections after the ECN accused them of not being ‘credible, fair, transparent, honest and objective’.The ECN said the human rights organisation had defamed the people whose names it publicised as having registered twice.’This action has duly compromised your integrity and credibility as an election observer,’ ECN chairperson Victor Tonchi wrote in a letter to the NSHR.Ya Nangoloh told the media and election observers from the Southern African Development Community that the ECN will not fool them as they have people in the organisation who can tip them off about any wrongdoings.Describing the electoral body as a ‘puppet’, the NSHR said the ECN was an extension of the ruling Swapo Party.’Its members, not all of them, continue to behave as if they are card-carrying apparatchiks of the ruling party, considering the hostility with which they confront civil society actors and media in this country,’ Ya Nangoloh said.The ECN, describing itself as a credible, responsible, transparent and fair electoral body, said on Sunday that it would prefer to refrain from ongoing campaigns of discrediting and defaming people.It accused the NSHR of using people in the ECN data capturing division to leak inconclusive information which the human rights body is using to distort facts about the electoral process.’What he claims to be a dossier of gross irregularities is nothing else than desperate attempts by his institution to mislead the public,’ the ECN said.