Isabel Bento

SWAKOPMUND – A dispute involving ballot boxes erupted at Swakopmund yesterday, as party agents confronted the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) officials at the coastal town over their handling of sealed ballot boxes.

Landless People’s Movement (LPM) regional officer Margareth du Toit claimed to have intercepted ECN officials attempting to transport sealed boxes back to the mobile polling station in the DRC settlement in order to retrieve an envelope that had been mistakenly placed inside one of the boxes.
Du Toit and the rest of the party representatives demanded that the boxes be opened in their presence.

“We are blocking them here. Let them open our seals in front of us, take out the envelope and seal the boxes again with our seals. 

Why are they afraid to open it? What are they hiding in those boxes?”
She accused a police officer on the scene of instructing ECN officials to drive away with the ballot boxes, calling it a blatant disregard for transparency.

“We are not here to take the law into our own hands, but these boxes will go nowhere until we get a resolution. All we are asking for is transparency,” Du Toit said.
Approached for comment, ECN returning officer for the Swakopmund constituency, Hileni Nathanael, explained the ballot boxes were sealed prematurely, with officials forgetting to allocate rejected ballot papers before sealing.

She added that the intention was to take the boxes back to the polling station to rectify the issue in compliance with election regulations.
“Rejected ballots must be allocated to explain why they were rejected, such as double votes or no selection. 

The team sealed the boxes before this verification process. By law, we are supposed to count at the polling station, but the political party representatives refused to return there,” she stated.

To address the issue, the ECN proposed resolving the issue on-site by verifying and allocating the rejected ballots in the presence of party representatives, which both parties agreed on.
Some political agents told Nampa and provided their notes that of the rejected ballots recorded, about 18 were due to the fact that they did not have ECN stamps.

Queried on this matter, Natanael denied allegations of irregularities regarding unstamped ballots, stating that all rejected ballots were due to other reasons.
-Nampa