LPM calls for urgent meeting with ECN over ballot paper issues

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

LPM member Ivan Skrywer on Friday in a letter asked the ECN for an urgent meeting to address this as well as the alleged 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 the commission will respond to the issue soon.

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

He says the party has also been informed that the ECN plans to call an urgent meeting on Friday, but only with its commissioners, to discuss the situation, with alleged suggestions of destroying the duplicates and starting a new printing cycle.

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

He says the LPM wants to be present when the issue is discussed, because it has lost trust in the ECN and believes everything it does should be “double-checked and verified over and again and again”.

“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 we ended up with duplicate ballot papers,” he says.

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