Namibia’s small opposition parties on Monday raised questions about last week’s election results which the ruling party and its presidential candidate, Hifikepunye Pohamba, won with a landslide victory.
The ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (Swapo) won 75,1% of the ballot in parliamentary elections and retained its 55 seats in the 72-member National Assembly, while Pohamba got 76,4% of the presidential vote.
”We sent an urgent letter to the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) about the audit,” said Congress of Democrats (CoD) spokesperson Ignatius Shixwameni.
”We want all elections material and ballot papers back in Windhoek by this Friday to start the process,” said Shixwameni, whose party saw its representation in Parliament dwindle from seven to five seats.
”Ballot books have to be reconciled with the number of votes,” he said, adding that it was suspicious that there was an ”unusually high voter turnout and the fact that the ruling Swapo party won the same percentage of votes in both the presidential and national elections as in 1999”.
The small Republican Party also expressed similar reservations.
Party president Henk Mudge said his organisation had sent a letter to the electoral commission late on Saturday expressing ”serious reservations about the way in which the elections and the counting process were conducted”.
”The electoral commission should allow for more involvement by party agents in the activities at polling and counting venues,” Mudge said.
Election observers from the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU) called the Namibian elections — the third since independence in 1990 — free and fair.
They noted, however, that there were flaws and cautioned that the counting process needed improvement.
Despite voting running fairly smooth last Monday and Tuesday, counting ballots in the vast desert country of 1,82-million people became a major headache, with official results being announced only on Sunday.
A five-member AU delegation declared the elections ”peaceful and democratically mature,” but said election norms adopted by SADC member states had to be adhered to in Namibia. – Sapa-AFP