LPM calls for urgent audience with ECN over ballot paper concerns

The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) is calling for an urgent meeting with the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) over alleged shortages of ballot papers.

LPM authorised representative Ivan Skrywer on Friday wrote to ECN seeking an urgent political party liason committee (PLC) to address the discovery of shortages and duplication of ballot papers at a government warehouse.

“We write to you as a concerned and responsible political party, following serious and alarming information that has been brought to our attention by our representative at the government warehouse,” Skrywer says.

ECN spokesperson De Wet Siluka says a response to the concerns will be provided in due course.

The areas of concern, Skrywer says, are Aranos, Tses, Otavi, Uis and Khorixas.

Skrywer adds that they have been informed that the ECN plans to call an urgent meeting on Friday, but only with its commissioners, to discuss the situation and the suggestions of allegedly destroying the duplicates and going into new a cycle of printing.

“We as the LPM reject the undercover/underground meetings,” he says.

He suggest that the ECN call a urgent special PLC meeting with all its stakeholders to brief parties on the matter.

He says they want to be present when the discussions take place because they have lost trust in the ECN and believe that everything it does should be double checked and verified multiple times.

“Our stance is that the ECN explain to the stakeholders as to what had transpired, what happened to the rest of the ballot papers and how did we end up with duplicate ballot papers,” he adds.

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