Opposition parties go to court over recount demand

Four opposition parties in Namibia will seek a court interdict to have all ballot papers from last week's elections recounted. Addressing a joint media conference on Wednesday, the representatives of the parties said a letter sent to the Electoral Commission over the weekend, requesting an audit of the votes, had remained unanswered by a Wednesday morning deadline. Last week SWAPO scored a landslide victory in elections for a new president and members of parliament, scooping 76 percent of the vote. "Our parties have collective evidence of violations of the Electoral Act," said Nora Schimming-Chase, vice president of the Congress of Democrats (CoD), the second largest political party, which won 7.3 percent of the vote. "The voters' roll is inflated and the unusual high voter turnout of some 85 percent is questionable," Schimming-Chase alleged. "We have consulted with our lawyers and collectively decided to apply for an urgent verification of the election results through a court order." Another concern for the parties - the CoD, the Republican Party (RP), the South West African National Union and the Namibia Movement for Democratic Change - was that hundreds of votes cast abroad were counted only on Monday and Tuesday this week, after the final results were officially announced on Sunday. "Continuing with the counting after the final declaration of the results is in breach of the Electoral Act and, thus, illegal," said Carola Engelbrecht, secretary general of the RP. The court interdict is expected before the end of this week. The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has, however, dismissed what it called irresponsible statements concerning the counting of votes from foreign missions. "It should be noted that the purpose of the official announcement ceremony was to formally make known the winners and losers for the elections race. This announcement was based on the results that had come in at the time. The ECN was fully aware of the number of the estimated registered voters abroad," the official news agency NAMPA quoted an ECN statement as saying. It noted that 270 ballot papers were received from polling stations in Russia, Brazil, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Sweden, China, France and Cuba after the announcement of the election results. SWAPO, which fought for liberation from South African rule, has been in power since independence in 1990.