This week, Electoral Commission of Namibia chairperson Elsie Nghikembua (EN) spoke with New Era senior journalist Kuzeeko Tjitemisa (KT) about the country’s electoral body’s activities, issues and preparation for the 2024 general elections.
KT: Chairperson Elsie Nghikembua, thank you for granting us the interview. It has been almost a year since you were appointed as the ECN’s chairperson. How are you settling into your new role?
EN: My experience as a serving commissioner has enabled me to settle into the new role of chairperson with relative ease. This helped me to know what I needed to focus on to strengthen the execution of our mandate of delivering fair, transparent and credible elections. I made my vision and expectations clear to both the commission and management. My vision for the commission is to work towards operational excellence in all spheres of our electoral mandate.
This vision will be implemented through several strategic objectives that have been carefully selected and highlighted within our strategic plan, such as strengthening our institutional capacity; improving and streamlining budgeting, procurement, logistics and asset management processes; strengthening of our legal framework and stakeholder engagements, as well as improving our planning, monitoring and evaluation functions.
These are amongst the areas that we are focusing on to create an enabling policy and institutional environment. It was also important that our stakeholders understand our plans. Hence, as a commission, we convened a meeting with our stakeholders, where I presented our plans.
KT: The government’s funding has long been a source of contention for the commission. How much do you believe will be sufficient to support this vital institution?
EN: The commission is funded by the government. This means that funding ceilings received per financial year depend on various economic factors that Treasury considers during a particular financial year. During the off-peak periods, the commission has less activities, compared to years when there are national elections, and the institution strives to operate within the available means to sustain its operations.
However, during the year building up to the national elections, the commission requires a significant budget to cater for the enormous electoral activities to ensure that it delivers credible elections.
The commission also has a responsibility to conduct by-elections which could happen at any time when a vacancy occurs because of either resignation, death or expulsion of a sitting regional councillor. The commission further has a responsibility to conduct various civic and voter education sessions to ensure that the public is equipped with the necessary information, and that they understand the importance of registering as voters.
It is also important for the public to understand the requirements and voting process before any electoral process takes place. All these activities require significant funding. Allocations to the commission are rarely adequate to execute on all these functions. As a commission, we have started to prepare for the 2024 Presidential and National Assembly elections as well as the Regional and Local Authorities elections in 2025.
Additional funding for the current MTEF period has thus been requested to purchase equipment, systems and software for these elections. Although the funding we receive is not sufficient for the commission’s budgetary needs, we acknowledge the consistent support the commission receives from Treasury to carry out its mandate, and remain hopeful that despite the very challenging economic conditions, additional funds will be availed to enable the commission to successfully carry out its mandate.
KT: The country’s highest court, the Supreme Court, recently found that the ECN should not have allowed PDM to change its list of candidates for the 2019 National Assembly. What has the ECN taken away from this ruling?
EN: The commission appealed a judgement from the Electoral Court, which revolved around the correct interpretation of Schedule 4 (4) of the Namibian Constitution. This appeal was necessary because the commission believed another court may come to a different conclusion regarding the interpretation of Schedule 4 (4), especially on the issue of a political party being free to choose in its own discretion which persons to nominate as members of the National Assembly to fill the seats the party became entitled to after an election.
The Supreme Court, however, confirmed the Electoral Court’s interpretation, and the commission fully complied with the ruling. The positive outcome from this ruling is that it has clarified the interpretation of Schedule 4 (4) for future elections.
KT: What is ECN’s opinion on regional and even local councillors who are elected in a constituency that they do not live in?
EN: Section 6 of the Regional Councils Act, 22 of 1992, states that a person qualifies to be a member of a regional council if he/she is ordinarily resident within the constituency for which he or she is elected, or, if such person is not so resident at the time of his or her election, becomes so ordinarily resident within a period of three months as from the date of his or her election as such a member.
In terms of the Local Authorities Act, 23 of 1992, no person shall be qualified to be a member of a local authority council unless he or she is qualified to vote, and is registered, in terms of the laws governing elections for members of local authority councils, as a voter, at an election for members of such a local authority council.
Therefore, although it is possible for candidates to be nominated for a regional council even if they do not reside in it, it is the responsibility of the elected member and the political party who nominated them to ensure that they comply with the requirements of the Regional Councils Act. Members of the local authorities cannot be nominated and cannot be elected for a local authority if they are not registered as voter(s) in that local authority.
KT: The ECN bore the brunt of adverse court decisions after the last few national elections. What are you doing to ensure the institution performs better in future elections?
EN: The commission has taken note of all court orders, and has already implemented them. The most significant is the Supreme Court ruling of 5 February 2020 regarding the section of the Electoral Act dealing with the voter verifiable paper audit trail.
Due to this ruling, the ECN resorted to the use of manual paper ballots in all elections instead of electronic voting. The decisions of the courts were taken into account during the strategic planning process with the aim of improving and strengthening our processes.
KT: What have you done so far to improve the efficiency and administration of the institution?
EN: The new commission has already achieved many important institutional goals. We conducted an introspection of our performance during the 2019/2020 elections, and valuable lessons were drawn from that exercise. These lessons have informed the focus of our strategic plan for the next five years.
The commission has also implemented a robust performance management system. Annual management plans have been developed, and all staff members of the commission have signed performance agreements.
The commission will be assessing performances on a quarterly basis. Another important milestone is the development of the institutional governance architecture, which entails the development and adoption of policies and standard operating procedures which guide and provide an operational framework for various processes and activities across the institution. Another tangible accomplishment is the finalisation of the fifth draft Electoral Amendment Bill, which forms the basis of envisaged proposed amendments to the Electoral Act. The draft bill has since been shared with stakeholders, and a broad-based national workshop will be held soon with all electoral stakeholders to seek their inputs.
KT: Voter education has been highlighted as a challenge for both political parties and the ECN. What is the organisation doing to improve on that vital part of its work?
EN: Conducting voter and civic education is one of the key deliverables of our new strategic plan. In ensuring a robust voter and civic education campaign in preparation for the 2024 elections, the commission will implement appropriate interventions in this regard. These will include the development of civic education content, and the training of all voter education officers on the conduct of voter and civic education.
We will deliberately target the youth and first-time voters by using various communication platforms, including social media. Other important groups which we will focus on include persons living with disabilities and those from marginalised communities.
The Electoral Act provides for the accreditation of any natural or juristic person, other than a registered political party or registered organisation, to provide voter and civic education to the public. The commission is, therefore, calling on those who have an interest in promoting this noble task to approach our offices to apply for accreditation.
Although the exclusive mandate of conducting voter and civic education is bestowed on the commission in terms of Section 49 of the Electoral Act, No.5 of 2014, we call for concerted efforts and collaboration by all stakeholders to ensure maximum participation in all electoral processes.
KT: What are you doing to increase interest in especially local and regional elections?
EN: The new strategic plan has prioritised understanding of voter apathy with a view to implementing interventions to increase voter participation in all elections. The commission will commission a survey to gain insights into the root causes of voter apathy, and develop solutions to address this phenomenon. Appropriate interventions will then be rolled out nationally.
KT: Given that campaigns are already in full swing, how prepared is the ECN for the 2024 parliamentary elections?
EN: As an election management body, we have been conducting elections for many years. We have systems and processes already in place. As indicated earlier, we have also conducted a post-mortem on the last elections to ensure we continuously improve on the conduct of elections.
The commission is already preparing for the 2024 elections, so we will confidently deliver free, transparent and credible elections.
KT: As you are drafting the next strategic plan, what will be your focus for the professional running of Namibia’s elections?
EN: We have already completed the new five-year strategic plan for 2022/2023-2026/2027, which defines our strategic agenda and roadmap. This plan will be launched at the end of June 2022.
The plan defines the goals we want to achieve over the next five years, the actions we will undertake to achieve them, and how we will measure our progress. The defined strategic actions contained herein flow from, amongst others, the commission’s 2016/2017- 2021/2022 strategic plan, and build on the lessons learnt from the 2019/2020 national elections and subsequent by-elections.
We will share more details at the launch. Suffice to say that the strategic plan will serve as a reference tool for consultations with stakeholders to keep working towards common goals. We will engage and communicate with clarity and transparency to ensure that all our stakeholders are well-informed and well-educated on issues of our democracy”.