WINDHOEK — Namibians will go to the polls to vote in the fifth Presidential and National Assembly Elections on November 28, the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) announced yesterday.
Polls at foreign missions and at Lüderitz and Walvis Bay, for sea-going personnel, would be conducted on November 14, while political parties are invited to submit their nominations for presidential candidates from October 13 – 29.
Furthermore, the Endola and Windhoek Constituencies will hold by-elections on November 7 and November 14, respectively.
The ECN said that it completed a successful supplementary voter’s registration exercise from September 8 – 20 and provisional voters’ register would be dispatched to all 121 Constituencies for objections from October 1 – 3.
“The ECN is currently putting in place, arrangements for the accreditation of both foreign and local election observers,” the commission said in a statement.
In the meantime, the Director of Operations at the ECN, Theo Mujoro has given the assurance that the necessary systems have been put in place for credible elections.
He said that they have also deployed teams and equipment to all constituencies and would maintain same infrastructure across the board.
According to Mujoro, there would be 42 regional coordinators and assistants, 121 constituency supervisors, 160 IT support staff, 3 505 registration officials and a total of 904 mobile registration kits in all regions.
He said that they have the Automatic Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) in place to detect duplicate fingerprints and were also exploring the possibility of a computerised system to interface with the Ministry of Home Affairs’ records, while sending teams to the magistrate courts to manually remove deceased people from the voter’s roll.
The ECN’s Operations Director said that the new voter card has a barcode which when scanned throws out data of the voter, which speeds up the voting process.
Mujoro further reassured voters of the new electronic voting machines’ (EVM’s) efficiency, saying that they would speed up the voting process as seen during elections in local authorities in the different constituencies. He promised that election results could be announced within 48 hours or less from opening to closing of polls.
“The 2004 was a shameful period when the country had to wait a week to announce results. We don’t want to repeat that again,” he said.
Furthermore, Mujoro said that results for each constituency would be announced and mounted at polling stations as soon as they become available but the most important result would be the tally of the whole country and not individual constituencies.
He stated that both houses of Parliament have passed the Electoral Act and Code of Conduct and were in the hands of the Speaker and he was confident that it (Electoral Act) would be presented to President Hifikepunye Pohamba and be signed before election day.
Mujoro said that voters could cast their votes anywhere without having to necessarily go to the constituency where they registered, as the whole country becomes one constituency. The new Act also makes provision for a full time chairperson who gives permission for voters to go to the police to make sworn statements. He said that the ECN also has an Electoral Risk Management Tool in place to monitor and be able to provide capabilities that are not only to do with security issues, but also in cases where a polling station is congested.
He added that once an EVM becomes faulty, they could retrieve data by removing the chip.