ALTHOUGH Swapo has reason to light the kapana fires to celebrate its landslide victory in the past weekend’s polls, it was the poorest voter turnout in a regional council election since Independence.
Only 38,63% of eligible voters voted in the regional elections on Friday and Saturday. The previous lowest regional council election turnout was 40% in 1998.
In the Khomas Region, fewer than 24% of registered regional council voters turned out to vote.
The highest percentage of voters was recorded in the Ohangwena Region – 52,7%. In the Caprivi Region, 51,3% of eligible voters cast their ballots in the regional council election, while in the Omusati Region, 50,9% of voters did so.
At the lower end of the scale, only 31,4% of registered voters went to the polling stations in the Erongo Region, while only 31,7% voted in the Kavango Region.
Graham Hopwood, the executive director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), said the ruling party has reason for concern despite emerging as overall victors – the voter apathy, their loss of the Windhoek East constituency and their failure to make headway in the Kunene Region ‘despite using all their incumbency advantages’.
Hopwood said although Swapo ‘did very well at these elections’, the low turnout ‘indicates there are still plenty of apathetic citizens whose votes are up for grabs and the loss of Windhoek East … indicates what can happen when they face a popular candidate prepared to do the hard slog of campaigning’.
Regarding the mark that opposition parties made in Friday and Saturday’s regional and local elections, Hopwood said: ‘For the opposition, there were few encouraging signs from this election. The Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) failed to gain traction following their 2009 debut, the Congress of Democrats (CoD) slumped, while the DTA did better in traditional strongholds.’
According to him, ‘Nudo held firm in the East but showed little capacity for expansion. The UDF had mixed results: poor in Erongo but indications of a revival in Kunene.’
Political analyst and lecturer Phanuel Kaapama attributed the poor voter turnout to ‘fatigue from last year’s elections and part of the problem for some could be that the [court] case has not been concluded’.
Following the national and presidential elections last year, nine opposition parties took the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) and Swapo to court for allegedly rigging the results.
A High Court judgement on the matter has been pending since September this year.
Kaapama said although it is good that opposition parties expressed concern about the allegedly delayed judgement, threats of boycotting elections discourage voters.
The RDP initially warned that it would stay away from the weekend’s elections should the 2009 verdict not be made known. Last week, they retracted this threat.
Kaapama said the ECN also has ‘a statutory obligation to educate voters’ but has relied on ‘traditional modes of advertisement’ which could also have contributed to so few people voting.
Apart from this, parties lost out on attracting young potential voters because parties hardly make use of the Internet and just rely on rallies, he said.
Yesterday, the RDP’s Libolly Haufiku claimed that ‘a number of Angolans’ had voted in the Ohangwena Region.
Apart from this, Haufiku said his party was informed that registered voters, after having voted, tried to give their voter cards to unregistered people in Katutura.
All these alleged irregularities will be included in a report that the opposition party will release today, he said.
On Sunday, Swapo secretary general Pendukeni Iivula-Iithana said the ruling party’s poll success was as a result of continuous hard work.
The ECN also on Sunday boasted that it was a successful election.
