RUNDU – The All People’s Party (APP) secretary general Vinsent Kanyetu says despite being given a court order, they are still awaiting for a direction from the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) to grant their party access to the alleged spoilt ballots they want to present to the High Court next week.
APP recently applied to electoral court to be given access and copies of 57 rejected ballots. The court then ordered the ECN to give APP access to last year’s regional council elections rejected ballots in the Kavango East region’s Ndonga Linena constituency.
“We are still waiting. Next Tuesday, on 14 July, we are going to present copies of this ballots, so we need the votes that we believe were not counted on the basis that the voters marked in the face of our candidate – and to us, the court order is a step in the right direction, as that is what we wanted,” Kanyetu said.
The order directed that the commission avails 57 rejected ballots from the constituency to the APP to be copied; the direction was made in an order issued by judges Nate Ndauendapo, Boas Usiku and Hannelie Prinsloo last month.
During the last elections, APP candidate Djami Balthazar Daniel obtained 1 061 votes – 12 votes less than the Swapo candidate Kampota Michael Shiwana, who received 1 073.
“We are very confident; just like how we said it in the beginning that we won the Ndonga Linena constituency elections because when we will add these ballots, our candidate will have more votes than the Swapo candidate,” he noted.
Kanyetu demands that when all this is done, they, without any delay, want their candidate sworn in and his salary to be backdated to the month that others were sworn in.
However, the ECN chief electoral officer Theo Mujoro yesterday said they are facilitating the request in terms of complying with the court order but did not give a date as to when they will give APP access to the ballots.
“We have acceded to that request through their lawyers, so I think we have sent a letter to their lawyers,” Mujoro noted.
– jmuyamba@nepc.com.na