WINDHOEK – Uncertainty around the use of electronic voting machines (EVMs) in next month’s general election sparked bitter verbal confrontations at a symposium hosted by the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) this week.
The bone of contention at Tuesday’s symposium was whether these machines will effectively deliver during the upcoming elections.
The discussion got so heated that Hewat Beukes of the Workers Revolutionary Party and August Maletzky of the African Labour and Human Rights Centre interrupted the official proceedings just before Speaker of the National Assembly Theo-Ben Gurirab took to the podium to deliver his keynote address.
Beukes and Maletzky were ordered to leave the hall where the symposium was being held.
Beukes who spoke to reporters outside the hall questioned why the programme did not make room for a discussion session where concerns particularly relating to the EVMs would be raised. He explained that the reliability of the EVMs is questionable and creates room for rigging the election results. He touched on the fact that the EVMs will not use a paper trail.
According to Beukes, his party is concerned about whether the EVMs would be ideal to use during the upcoming elections and sought answers from the ECN on a number of occasions, but there was no response.
“All I asked them is whether there is no provision for discussions in the programme. Where is the time to discuss these things?,” queried Beukes. “This is a rigged election and it’s going to have a rigged outcome,” alleged Beukes.
He further said it was unethical for Gurirab to address the various political parties seeing that he belongs to the ruling party, saying it is conflict of interest and the ECN should be an independent body. “You can see these people are crooks,” Beukes remarked.
“The ECN must be an independent body. It’s a PR (public relations) exercise. We don’t need education, we need accountability,” said Beukes. In his speech, Gurirab said he wanted the men to stay because they were exercising their freedom of speech.
Director of Operations, Theo Mujoro, said it was the first time in a very long time that Beukes attended an ECN event, adding that Beukes’ outburst was surprising.
“We did not expect it. Those people do not attend our events. It’s the first time we see them at our event after a long time,” said Mujoro.
A question and answer session was held during discussion of the EVMs.
Spokesperson of the Namibia Economic Freedom Fighters (NEFF) Olsen Kahiriri claimed during the session that the ECN was not ready to hold the upcoming elections as there is uncertainty regarding the EVMs, making specific reference to the fact that the EVMs will not use a paper trail.
“This is not the way of doing a professional election. ECN is not ready to hold the election. We could see from the advertisements of tenders that the ECN is not ready,” remarked Kahiriri.
Other requests were for the ECN to avail some EVMs to political parties so that they can conduct voter education with their supporters. There were also questions on whether the EVMs accommodate the visually impaired.
The ECN chairperson, Notemba Tjipueja, responded that for safety purposes the ECN will not give out any EVMs to political parties. She explained that there are posters which the political parties can use to educate their supporters on how to use an EVM. Further, it was heard that the EVMs do cater for the visually impaired and that the law also caters for assistant voters.
ECN Commissioner Barney Karuuombe said the proposal to use EVMs dates back to 2004. He added that the issue of EVMs was legal under the previous law.
Nico Mingelius of the ECN assured those present that it is really impossible to cheat using EVMs.
Tjipueja said the ECN has decided to use electronic voter verification devices throughout the country to verify if a voter is on the register. “The voter verification devices will verify that the voter card is valid and will note the constituency and region of the voter in comparison with the polling station where the voter decides to cast their vote,” said Tjipueja.
Members of different political parties, the diplomatic corps and civil society were amongst those who attended the electoral symposium which took place at the ECN headquarters.