By: Kelvin Chiringa
All People’s Party (APP) president Ignatius Shixwameni has said that the Swapo Party is lying when it says that they were not invited when the ballot boxes for the Ndonga Linena elections were opened.
The Swapo Party secretary general Sophia Shaningwa said on Monday that her party will boycott the recount that has been ordered by the electoral court.
Shaningwa, instead, wants a rerun.
However, Shixwameni said they will not allow it.
“We had access. They were invited. They are lying. The secretary general of Swapo is lying because these documents were delivered to their head office. They were at all material times invited either to object and when we did the spoilt ballot paper thing all the political parties and the candidates were invited.
“They chose not to go there because they think that they are dictators who can dictate what they want to do. It’s really a pity. When I read that statement of Shaningwa the so-called politburo and central committee of Swapo, I really feel shocked and ashamed that they could even put something like that in writing. No! They know they have been manipulating the electoral commission.
“They know what they did in Ndonga Linena. They know what they did in other constituencies in the Hardap region and the Kharas region. It’s a lie to say that they did not know. They have been manipulating elections all these years and they know it themselves. Swapo should not think that we are stupid. We know what they did,” said Shixwameni.
However, Swapo said that it will not be used to sanitise the vote recount when laws have been broken and the credibility of the electoral commission has been questioned.
Shaningwa said the Swapo Party seal was unsealed by persons not known to the party and its agents were not invited to observe the process.
“The question is how did the ECN and APP manage to open the ballot boxes without the presence of Swapo Party agents? The integrity of that election is compromised. The Electoral Act affords election agents of registered political parties, registered organisations or independent candidates to add their own seals to ballot boxes as contemplated in the subsection.
“These are serious and material proof that there are irregularities committed here. While the High Court had ordered accessibilities to the election materials, the High Court has in no ways ordered the breaking of the law. We do not know what transpired there, since our party agents were not present when the stored ballot boxes were unsealed,” she said.
Shaningwa also fired a salvo at the former ECN chairperson, Adv Notemba Tjipeuja, for “uttering reckless statements”.
“In particular, the Political Bureau has noticed, the public pronunciations, allegedly, made by the outgoing Commissioner and former chairperson of the ECN, by alleging, according to report that “we wrongly declared SWAPO as Ndonga Linena Winner”.
“These pronunciations are not only reckless, but are farfetched and have compromised the ECN as a truly professional body that is delivering professionally driven election results to the Namibian people. Such a reckless statement is trying to portray a negative image around the matters concerning the elections in Namibia,” she said.
Tjipeuja has, however, denied saying that they wrongly declared Ndonga Linena as a Swapo-won constituency.
She refused to comment at great length on the Swapo attacks referring all questions to the ECN leadership.
“I didn’t say that. You should just please get the comment from the CEO. All I said was that the presiding officers wrongly rejected some ballot papers. That’s what I said. And I said the matter is still with the court and the court will give the final indication on that matter.
“I am not going to respond to that because I am no longer at the ECN. All I said was that when the court order for the materials was made and then there was a look at those papers and there were some indications that there were some ballot papers that were rejected which should not have been rejected. That’s all,” she said.
