ALFRED SHILONGO & AKANI CHAUKE in Windhoek, Namibia
Namibia Bureau
WINDHOEK, (CAJ News) – VOTE counting is underway in Namibia following watershed polls that have been marred by allegations of vote rigging, shortage of ballots and dysfunctional equipment.
The crises that characterised Wednesday’s election has put pressure on the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) amid accusations this was the country’s worst-organised elections post-independence.
The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology, meanwhile, earlier confirmed that early Wednesday, power outages in the Ohangwena and parts of the Kavango West regions after a transformer blew out but this was not expected to impact on the conduct of the poll.
Some polling stations later Wednesday ran out of ballots in the afternoon, leaving voters to spend long hours waiting to make their mark.
Voting went beyond the 21h00 by which voting was scheduled to end, and spilled to Thursday morning, by the time preliminary results were trickling in from some stations.
The main opposition Independent Patriots for Change, of Panduleni Itula, was contemplating approaching the Election Court to set aside the presidential and parliamentary polls citing the irregularities.
This highlighted growing frustration against the electoral commission.
The ECN had called for Thursday a meeting with the Political Parties Liaison Committee, made up of members of the parties involved in the poll.
However, there were unexplained delays and for nearly 2 hours, at the time of publishing this article, it had not kicked off, at the ECN headquarters.
Instead, the atmosphere developed to tension as opposition parties held their own meeting without involving the ruling South West People’s Organisation (SWAPO) or ECN.
There are some accusations ECN would compromise the poll for a favourable result for SWAPO.
“It would seem that we need to occupy the streets and shutdown everything in order to protect the rights to vote of our people who were not allowed to vote by the incompetent ECN-PF that is working hand-in-hand with SWAPO-PF,” said former Windhoek mayor, Prof. Job Amupanda.
Preliminary results indicated this would be a two-horse race between IPC and SWAPO, whose candidate, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, hopes to become the Southern African country’s first female president.
However, the liberation movement is projected to face its stiffest test yet in 34 years.
In the Kavango East, a stronghold of SWAPO, indicates she had lost to Itula.
In the parliamentary poll for another stronghold of Rehoboth West, SWAPO lost to IPC.
“Still early days, but it’s looking like a two-horse race to the finish,” commented analyst Gwen Lister.
The unofficial election tracking site, Namvotes, however had Nandi-Ndaitwah leading the presidential race at 51,32 percent (38 694 votes) and Itula at 24,85 percent (18 734 votes) by Thursday afternoon.
SWAPO led by 41 seats to IPC’s 20, according to the same site.
Official results are expected on Saturday. About 1,4 million people, almost half the country’s population, were registered to vote.
– CAJ News