Thread: Your comments on the 2009 Presidential and National Assembly elections

Originally Posted by Mie1

We.... whatever one's feelings: It's all over bar the shouting!

Viva SWAPO! Viva Namibia!

At least, next time around the ballot papers will not be so overcrowded ............

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Why? Are they going to cut down on parties that can participate in elections? Parties can merge and make a bigger impact

Noted. However had I been in the steering of things and I have nothing to hide, I would have allowed all possible mechanism to promote transparency since I know I have support. Failure to do so makes anyones concerns weightier than they they may not have been should things had been done in a transparent manner. I for one, had I been SWAPO, would have even imported e.g. Americans as an independent Observer, allow the NSHR to monitor ALL they want, cause I have nothing to loose right?

Originally Posted by Unregistered

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Why? Are they going to cut down on parties that can participate in elections? Parties can merge and make a bigger impact

Judging by the turn-out, this is what any smart minority would venture into...as long as peace prevail

Yes, juikk! Of course it makes sense .... but.... they all want to play chief and nobody wants to be an Indian (Red Indian - Native American)

Unregistered: Why? Are they going to cut down on parties that can participate in elections? Parties can merge and make a bigger impact

Of course not! Nobody is going to do any cutting The losers may just think twice before engaging in another exercise in electoral futility.

I'm not an expert about Namibian politics and elections but it should be everyone's concern in Namibia that the opposition parties are not happy with the election process and are even challenging it. Surely that gives the whole excercise mroe integrity? Better to have everyone on board and why are so many people saying the elections were not free and fair? Maybe where there's smoke there's a fire?

The Joint Observer Mission (JOM) of the Namibia Non-Governmental Organisation Forum Trust (Nangof) and the SADC Council of NGOs (SADC-CNGO) say they could not declare the elections free and fair and instead called on Namibians to "uphold peace and tolerance as the nation awaits the outcome of the court challenge(s)".

The reasons? Well, some if it is not new, some of it is but whichever I think the observations need to be taken account of and I'm sure the upcoming court case will do just that:

The pre-election phase fell short of meeting the requirements, benchmarks and standarsd for the holding of free and fair election because there was inadequte voter education by the ECN, which could be the reason for the high number of spoilt ballots; the ECN remained quiet on the many incidences of intolerance there were in contraventnio fo the ECN's Code of Conduct; a glaring bias was exhibited on the part of the state media in favour of SWAPO, and the summary scrapping of the customary free air time to contesting parties by the NBC. Further, the use of state resources by SWAPO to futher its election cause was obvious and deliberate

The election phase itself was deemed peaceful and calm and voting proceeded smoothly. Howeverthe observers felt they were challenged to comment obn the voter tunrout in the absence of a reliable voters register. Also - and I think most importantly - while the provision of counting votes at the polling stations was a positive development in the Electoral Act amendment, the legal requirement of posting these results at the stations was not adhered to in most cases.

With regard to the post-election phase, the JOM states that this phase "is still in full swing", but the mission questioned the transparency of the announcement of results, stating that the "ECN was receiving results under a cloak of secrecy".

It noted that the tendered vote system posed a huge challenge to the ECN, creating serious logistical and election management challenges. The JOM pointed to the fact that given the nature of the tendered ballot, all results would have had to be announced in one go, instead of in a piecemeal fashion as had been done because every constituency potentially carries tendered votes from every other constituency.

In this ongoing post-election phase, the results have been rejected by the majority of the political parties, and eight of these parties have approached the high court in this regard.

Kul jou hier en kul jou daar ... en jy is skoon deurmekaar

Kul jou hier, en kul jou daar - en kyk daar het ons sommer nog 'n duisend stemme in ons hoek