Elections are the bedrock of democracy and the election commissions’ credibility is central to democratic legitimacy. Elections give citizens an opportunity to choose leaders or representatives of their choice, hold government to account and help to shape national policy making.
In Africa, many independent election bodies established in the 90s on the eve of Namibia’s independence, played an important role in the early deepening of democratic values across Africa.
As most countries started expanding rights and freedoms and strengthening the rule of law, these bodies particularly in southern Africa, coordinated successive multi-party elections. Hence, elections have now become routine and accepted as a necessary means of legitimate political power. Over the past three decades, many African countries have transitioned to multi-party liberal democracy and political power is generally now garnered through the ballot box rather than politically motivated violence and guns. Admittedly, despite decades of democracy, many countries still struggle to have free, fair and transparent polls and seamless power changes.
While highly contested elections like the recent ones in Namibia on 27 November 2024, is a sign of a working democracy, there are still trends that undermine the integrity of many of countries’ electoral processes and quality of elections.
Challenges
An electoral cycle approach shows that problems can vary from cases of electoral violence and voter intimidation, vote rigging, gerrymandering electoral districts or constituencies, incomplete electoral registers, through to under-resourced electoral officials, poorly designed adjudication process, bias tendency, lack of transparency, failure to consult stakeholders (political parties), lack of leadership, failure to plan and execute plans and inconsistent enforcement of electoral rules, and more.
There are also the causes of lack of trust among political parties and voters in election management bodies. Thus, according to Afrobarometer, the number of citizens in Africa with little or no confidence in their national electoral commissions rose from 41% to 55% between 2011/13 to 2021/23. This mistrust is deeply rooted in how election management bodies are constituted, their independence, their appointment processes, as well as, how these bodies perform their functions fairly and transparently.
Admittedly, polls in Africa are undermined by weak transparency surrounding the electoral process. Electoral management bodies’ inability to build consensus across political divides on key aspects is one main critical obstacle. This is worsened by incumbents’ control of these processes and accusations of electoral commissions being biased against opposition parties, and mistrust. All these undermine the integrity of the polls.
In addition, the use of misinformation and disinformation tactics to undermine elections is a growing global trend, exacerbated by fake news linked to artificial intelligence (AI). These negative trends jeopardize democracy in many of our countries.
Although elections are still widely preferred, citizens’ support for polls to choose leaders or their representatives has dwindled by average of 8% since 2011 across 29 African countries, according to Afrobarometer, and the number of Africans who didn’t vote in their recent national elections rose from 18.2% in 2001 to 24.7% in 2023.
As an antidote and to improve the quality of elections, election management bodies must truly be doing preparations, and be independent of external influence, control and manipulation.
These are achieved by appointing competent and experienced officials through consultative processes and providing them with advanced training and adequate resources needed to function. Also, officials can restore voter confidence by refraining from making last second additions or amendments to election rules and avoid attempts to limit or suppress voting.
Importantly, the electoral bodies should also work on securing public trust and confidence by having harmonious relationships with all stakeholders especially political parties, treat them equally and by building consensus across the broad political spectrum in a transparent manner.
Namibia’s election debacle
Admittedly, the bar for 2024 Namibia Presidential and National Assembly elections was undoubtedly set too low, despite almost five years of preparations. Voting on the Special Voting Day on 13 November for essential service workers and Namibians abroad, as well as the 27 November vote, were marred by logistical and technical problems, such as the use and malfunction voter identification tablets, inadequate distribution of ballot papers, and insufficient distribution of polling stations, causing long winding queues, that significantly frustrated voters to cast their ballots.
In summary, this year, Namibia is going to hold Regional and Local Authority elections in November.
As such, this time around, ECN without publicly providing a test plan on the preparations and the overall management of these elections, it would once again give rise to a barrage of doubt and skepticism on their credibility and may jeopardise voter confidence in many respects.
*Maj. Gen. (Rtd) J. B Tjivikua is a Criminal Intelligence Analyst.