SADC observers say they’re not here ‘to police Namibia’

CONTESTING political parties and voters should bear in mind that elections are not a time to view each other as enemies, but as competitors because all involved in the elections are compatriots, the Executive Secretary of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Tomas Salomao, said yesterday.

‘All those participating in elections must be prepared to honourably and responsibly win or lose.’Salomao welcomed the first two dozen of about 100 election observers from all 14 SADC member states at a short ceremony in Windhoek.The group has set up an office at a hotel near Eros Airport and it is led by Mozambican Diplomatic Affairs Minister Francisco Madeira.’We are here to celebrate Namibia’s democracy during the elections and to observe the process, not to police the elections,’ Madeira made clear.Asked by reporters about the SADC observer mission’s view on access of political parties to State media, which had been skewed in favour of the ruling party in Namibia, Madeira said: ‘We hold the view which is laid down in the SADC Principles and Guidelines governing Democratic Elections.’Those principles stipulate under paragraph 4.6 that ‘all contesting parties and candidates should have equal access to the public media’. While the State-owned newspaper New Era is giving broad coverage to all political parties in its reporting, the radio and television stations of the public broadcaster NBC devote around 83 per cent of their reports to Swapo.This has been established by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which has monitored NBC coverage over the past two weeks.The NBC’s clear preference for the ruling party is thus contravening the SADC election principles and guidelines, but the leader of the SADC observer group would not be drawn into that.’We will observe and then compile our report after the elections based on facts we collected on the ground,’ Madeira said.According to Shafimana Ueitele, Commissioner of the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN), the ECN will set up 997 fixed polling stations around the country and dispatch 580 mobile teams. These teams will visit 2 213 polling points over the two voting days on November 27 and 28.Asked where the ballots of the mobile voting points would be counted, Ueitele said that would happen at the last polling point visited by a team at the end of the second voting day.