Chaos because of the administrative incompetence of the Electoral Commission of Namibia has delayed the final results of the national and presidential elections for more than five days as ballots in several constituencies have had to be recounted.
The high number of rejected ballots and problems experienced with the tendered ballot system, leading to mistakes in tallying final results, have forced the commission to recall all presiding officers to try to verify final results in several key constituencies.
At the time of writing results from only 51 of 117 constituencies had been announced, most showing a huge vote for ruling Swapo.
The Rally for Democracy and Progress appeared set to take over as official opposition, but initial, unofficial results from last Sunday predicting a strong showing for them were soon reversed by the commission’s ‘official, verified resultsâ€.
How these were verified is unclear: the voters’ roll changed from a claimed 1,36-million voters in October to a ‘final roll†with only about 822 000. The commission now claims there are 1,163-million registered voters in a population of 2,1-million
The often significant lower number of votes cast in the presidential and National Assembly elections raised concerns.
Commission officials claimed the reason was that some voters preferred to vote in one or other election, but could not explain why there were more National Assembly than presidential votes.
Voters were first verified against the voting roll, then had their left hands marked with invisible ink before being issued with the presidential ballot. After voting for the presidential candidate they were issued the ballot for the National Assembly election, with officials shepherding them at every step.
How hundreds — even thousands — of voters managed to skip the first step is unclear. Calls for the dismissal of the commission’s director, Victor Tonchi, have escalated in the past week as it appeared the election was heading for the courts, a repeat of 2004.
Adding fuel to the fire is the fact that police have arrested three officials, including a presiding officer, in a key constituency in the north for opening sealed ballot boxes containing voting materials before the elections started. All three are known Swapo activists.