Rudolf Gaiseb
The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has rejected the applications of three independent presidential candidates Ally Angula, Jeremiah Kaambo and Elsie Chen.
The announcement was made at the commission’s public sitting yesterday at its headquarters. They extended the sitting until today, giving the candidates time to correct their mistakess.
The extension will also enable the chairperson to formally accept the nominations, and announce candidates and political parties duly nominated.
“The extension has been granted to afford registered political parties or persons who have submitted nominations the opportunity to rectify any rejected nominations, or nominate another qualified person as a candidate for the election.
“This sitting is extended for a period not exceeding one day from the original close of the sitting. The commission will continue to adhere to the provisions of the Electoral Act, and any duly-nominated candidates will be declared in line with Section 75(1) after the close of the extended sitting tomorrow (today),” the commission stated.
One of the presidential candidates, Angula, told New Era yesterday she does not see it as a rejection because they have extended the timeline to rectify.
“One of the reasons for the rejection is that I submitted a proof of payment for the N$10 000, instead of the receipt from the ministry of finance. Therefore, I will just go to the cash office and get the receipt. The other one is that we are deficient in three regions. But that will be resolved immediately. And then we’ve got three regions within which we had people who submitted fake voter registration numbers (VR). We now have between today (yesterday) and tomorrow (today) to get in the numbers. And we had already started the process because we knew of the deficiency.
We communicated with ECN already ahead of time. We wrote them a letter on Monday that we delivered to them, indicating which regions we had detected fraudulent voter registration numbers.
We’ll just need to meet those deficiencies, and we are not too far,” Angula said.
She added, “I think from the three independent candidates who submitted, unfortunately, the other two had not submitted anything at all on the system. However, I think it is the introduction of the new system that really set us back because it took us off the road for eight days.
“For me, I need to give them a receipt, upload the rest of the regions on the system, and cover up those fake VR numbers that we got in the three regions of Omusati, Ohangwena and Oshana.”
New Era could not reach Kaambo and Chen for comment.