I can’t believe we haven’t stormed the Electoral Commission of Namibia’s (ECN) building or demanded the removal of all the clowns who proudly brought us the rerun of last year’s regional and local authority elections in some places in southern Namibia.
There are also complaints about “irregularities” in other areas.
Well, by now we are used to at least one humungous blunder by the ECN but this one hurts.
While we’re penniless, we had to fork out some more funds to run elections in some local authorities and one constituency in the south.
Judges ordered the ECN to pay original participants in the polls N$50 000 to be able to again take part in the election for a member of the Hardap Regional Council and N$25 000 in respect of elections for local authority councils.
Then there are the quite generous expenses luxuriated on the army of ECN officials plus the other government services needed for a credible election. Notwithstanding the cost of reprinting ballot papers.
The cost to the credibility of the ECN as well as Namibia’s elections is incalculable.
ECN chief electoral officer Theo Mujoro admitted that the commission detected serious procedural errors in last November’s elections at Koës, Aroab and Stampriet, as well as in the Mariental Rural constituency.
The commission offered voters at Aroab and Koës ballot papers meant for Keetmanshoop.
The ECN has not declared official results for the disputed areas and asked the Electoral Court to order the elections at Koës, Aroab and Stampriet, as well as the Mariental Rural constituency, to be redone.
Those elections are being held today.
Mariental rural constituency polling officials issued Stampriet local authority ballot papers to people who were apparently not registered as local authority voters.
How the flying f**k?
With all the officials involved? No one checked, double-checked and checked again before they drove off with the ballots or issued them to non-eligible voters?
Apart from the slip-ups in the south, Mujoro said the ECN also had to sort out seat allocation blunders at Otavi, Okakarara and Katima Mulilo, where returning officers declared the results and allocated seats to political parties who did not win seats while omitting others that obtained enough votes to be allocated seats.
At Otavi a returning officer kamma misapplied the formula for allocating seats, said Mujoro.
He said the commission has also received about six complaints regarding the results in the Otjombinde and Tsumkwe constituencies and the Grootfontein local authority, but he swiftly declared them flawless.
The All People’s Party (APP) has also gone to court to ask for a recount of votes in the Ndonga Linena constituency in Kavango East after APP candidate Daniel Djami (1 061 votes) lost to Swapo’s Michael Kampota by 12 votes.
Eina!
To the naked eye, this looks like but another innocent but monumental administrative stuff-up by the ECN but we should absolutely not be so forgiving when it comes to the administration of our elections.
It’s a slippery slope.
One day you boast about free and fair elections and peaceful transfer of power and the next you plead with the world that your country is “open for business” as if you’re an ugly prostitute with a penchant for robbing customers.
Imagine, the ECN had to ask the Electoral Court to nullify and to order re-election in those regional council and local authority contests.
Neh man guys man! This is so very unAfrican!
How could the organiser of the elections ask a court to intervene in their f**k-ups?
When we are caught in Africa with our fingers in a stuffed ballot box we blame white people, sinister foreign forces or we invent an excuse. Could the officials not even come up with a uniquely Namibian excuse like a lion stormed the polling stations and ate all opposition votes?
Haven’t we learnt anything from our Zimbabwean cousins?
These guys have written the book on elections knavery.
Anything from tribal chiefs threatening subordinates with eviction should they not vote a certain way, government relocating scores of people to a certain area overnight and even unofficial new polling stations opening on the day of the elections (in governing party strongholds) are all now well and truly entrenched into the Zimbabwean electoral system.
