WINDHOEK – The director of operations at the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN), Theo Mujoro revealed the final voters’ register gazetted on Friday for the upcoming Presidential and National Assembly Elections stands at 1.2 million.
He said 36 384 potential voters were turned away for not meeting the stipulated requirements to register as voters.
The provisional voters’ roll contained a list of 1 277 578 names of potential voters, which included already registered voters, who for some reason went to register again during the supplementary voters’ registration process causing a duplication.
A number of deceased people were also removed from the final list, although that was met with some challenges as the ECN did not have a computerised interface with the Ministry of Home Affairs and the electoral body had to send teams in the whole country to collect records of the deceased who were on the provisional roll.
Mujoro said the electoral body has now silenced critics on the issue of the voters’ roll as they did a proper job in putting together a register with a few mishaps.
“When you look at (election) issues, political parties are not talking about the voters’ roll. We are proud that we did a proper job and they (political parties) can attest to that,” beamed Mujoro, adding that it was all due to the additional verification capabilities of the electronic voting machines (EVMs) that this was possible.
He said critics were now changing to other avenues such as trying to find fault with the EVMs or claiming the ECN would run out of the voting machines due to the fact one ballot unit only has 15 slots while political parties contesting the elections are 16.
Mujoro dismissed such insinuations saying even when an extra ballot unit is connected to the control unit to make up for the sixteenth party, the number of EVM’s would still be sufficient for the entire country.
ECN would deploy 4 160 EVM’s for the elections (2 080 for each Presidential and National assembly elections) and with a total of 1 255 fixed polling stations and 2 711 mobile polling stations and that the whole country would be covered sufficiently.
On the issue of voters’ roll being availed to political parties, Mujoro said it was the responsibility and obligation of the ECN to make sure that all contesting political parties received a voters’ roll.
“The whole issue of developing a voters’ register and putting it together is a mandate of the ECN. We have a duty to subject the voters’ roll to public scrutiny,” he added.
By Magreth Nunuhe