Two Namibian political parties scored a legal victory Friday when three judges on the country’s Electoral Court ruled they can examine Electoral Commission materials from last month’s presidential and legislative elections. The parties have rejected election results, which showed the long-ruling SWAPO party retaining control of parliament, although with a reduced majority.
The two parties — the Independent Patriots for Change, or IPC, and the Landless People’s Movement, or LPM — appear to be looking for evidence of irregularities in the elections that returned the SWAPO party to power.
Opposition parties say voter turnout was suppressed in some areas due to a lack of ballot papers.
But critics argue that even though there were widespread irregularities, they were of a logistical nature and cannot be seen as having affected the final election results.
John Nakuta is a human rights lawyer and lecturer at Namibia’s national university.
Speaking to VOA at the courthouse Friday, Nakuta outlined what he believed the IPC and LKM are trying to accomplish.
“So, it is as if they want to inspect whether or not there indeed was irregularities, as they seem to be unofficially saying there were irregularities," said Nakuta. "They want to investigate as to establish evidence whether there was irregularities and then after they would then, I suppose, come back to ask the court to nullify based on the evidence they would produce.”
A spokesperson for the IPC, Imms Nashinge, said Friday’s ruling is just a first step in a legal challenge that the party intends to bring to court in about a week.
“We made it clear that we are not accepting anything from this sham of an election from day one and our colleagues, other political parties such as PDM, UDF and others are in support with us. That’s why you have seen on the day of the announcement we did not attend," said Nashinge. "We made it clear even before the results were announced that even if it come out on our favor, we were not going to accept anything because it violates the principles and values of our democracy.”
At the courthouse, Elections Commissioner Pius Iikwambi said the commission had already reached an agreement with the aggrieved parties where they offered them the opportunity to inspect election materials and this court process was just an affirmation of what they had already decided.
Electoral commission spokesperson De Wet Siluka told VOA the political parties that object to the outcome of the elections are themselves to blame for failing to send representatives to various polling stations to inspect the election process as it was being carried out.
“We even allocated them tables, chairs and computers where they could verify, as we verify also, to say, 'OK, this is what we have received from the collation center, these are the documents we have received from the polling station themselves and here is what...' Because here we only verify to see what we received from the collation center and what they received from the polling station are they adding up, then we proceed,” said Siluka.
Twenty-two political parties contested the just-ended presidential and National Assembly elections in Namibia.
Of those, 13 managed to obtain seats in the 104-member National Assembly where SWAPO holds a majority of 51 seats.
The ruling Friday by the electoral court says the opposition parties can inspect the forms showing results from various polling stations. Critics say it’s unclear what, if anything, the parties will be able to prove once they are done inspecting the documents.
