The Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) is giving back a wrongfully allocated Rundu Town Council seat after the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) admitted an error in counting votes.
The ECN last week wrongly announced that the Rundu Urban Community Association (Ruca) obtained no seat in the just-ended local authority election and the IPC one.
This is while Ruca received 674 votes, compared to the IPC’s 642.
The issue was discussed during a meeting at the ECN’s head office in Windhoek yesterday, attended by all the parties that contested for seats at Rundu.
Ruca spokesperson Marcellus Haivera yesterday said the seat has now been formally returned to the association, but the correction can only take effect once the Electoral Court authorises it.
“The ECN has admitted that it wrongly allocated a seat to the IPC, and now there is a procedure that needs to be followed, because this is now a legal matter.
They cannot just announce it, they have to go through the Electoral Court,” he said.
Haivera said the error was picked up after Ruca noticed that the final seat allocation form did not match what had been announced at the collation centre.
“We then did our own calculations, and that’s how we came about the over 600 votes.
We then went to regional electoral officer Paulus Sifire, and he pulled out form 32, and our numbers were similar, and the IPC clearly got fewer votes than us.”
Ruca is now demanding that the ECN publicly announces the correction.
Haivera, however, says this could involve a long process, which means the swearing in of Rundu councillors will be delayed until the matter has been fully resolved.
Popular Democratic Movement secretary general Manuel Ngaringombe says the commission now needs the Electoral Court’s approval before making any correction.
“The ECN cannot just make corrections on its own. It must seek permission from the Electoral Court.
But this is what we have been saying all along, that trust is an issue with the ECN, and these are the fruits,” he says.
ECN spokesperson De Wet Siluka yesterday said a full statement will be issued to give account of what happened.
The IPC’s Kavango East regional chairperson, Frans Kandjilu, says the mistake lies with the ECN.
According to him the commission’s admission of an error is a step in the right direction, although the legal route may delay the swearing in of councillors.
“The information I have is that many people complained, and certain ballot papers were not included because they came late from another polling station,” he says.
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