Ruling SWAPO party sweeps to victory

President Sam Nujoma of Namibia and his ruling Southwest Africa People's Organisation (SWAPO) swept to their biggest victory yet on Monday as the final votes were counted after the country's third presidential and parliamentary elections. With the votes from 103 of the country's 105 constituencies already counted, a spokesman for the independent Electoral Commission told IRIN that Nujoma, had won 77 percent of the votes in the presidential poll, while SWAPO had taken 76 percent of the votes in the parliamentary election. "It is a huge victory for President Nujoma and for SWAPO," said Peter Mietzner, spokesman for the commission. "This is not just a two-thirds majority they had last time, it is a three-quarters majority, the best they have done so far, and we can say confidently that it was a free and fair election from our point of view, although we will investigate complaints of irregularities. We have had three written complaints, and some verbal complaints so far, and naturaly we expect to hear more." Analysts in the Namibian capital, Windhoek, said the victory had surprised many observers because they had expected disillusionment over the military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and corruption to dent SWAPO's support. There was also criticism by opposition parties ahead of the election over Nujoma's controversial change in the constitution enabling him to stand for a third five-year term. One of those in the opposition who had been expected to curb SWAPO support was Ben Ulenga, a SWAPO dissident and former ambassador to Britain, who nine months ago, broke away to form the Congress of Democrats (CoD) with other allies also disillusioned with the ruling party. But in the presidential stakes, Ulenga polled 11 percent, just ahead of the 10 percent garnered by Katuutire Kaura, leader of the other main opposition party, the Democratic Turnhalle Alliance (DTA). The results of the parliamentary contest, in which the CoD scored 10 percent against the DTA's nine percent, meant that the CoD will replace the DTA as the official opposition. In the 1994 election, the DTA won over 20 percent support in parliament. Nujoma, who was due to deliver a victory speech later on Monday, said in a South African television interview on Sunday: "The Namibian people asked me to continue with their mandate in order to implement the economic plans and programs that the SWAPO party government has drawn up." The Electoral Commission reported a turnout of 62 percent of the country's 878,000 registered voters. The National Society for Human Rights (NSHR) and the CoD told IRIN that SWAPO was so dominant in Namibia that a real challenge is almost impossible. They accused the ruling party of using its parliamentary majority to guarantee it the main share of resources for the campaign and favourable radio and television coverage. "This was not a free and fair election by any means," said Nora Schimming-Chase, a former ambassador to Germany who also joined CoD. She told IRIN: "The international observers will go home and say it was free and fair - with reservations. We find that insulting because the election was held without a registry of voters, but that's ok in Africa as far as they are concerned. "There was an agreement that all the parties counter-sign before the results are announced. Yet the results have been announced and we're discovering in some cases that those counted by our party agents don't tally with the results announced. We don't have the resources to go to court - what happens next? At least, we will demand a few re-counts," she said. Despite the odds, she said CoD planned to be a "quality" opposition in parliament.