Elections chief warns parties against violence

The Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) has warned the country’s political parties to do all they can to prevent violence as political temperatures mount in the final run-up to the country’s general elections next week. Joram Rukambe, director of the ECN, said in an interview with IRIN on Tuesday that he had repeatedly warned the leaders of the nine political parties contesting the election not to let the process bring condemnation from foreign observers or rights groups at home. He said he was aware of complaints by a new party formed earlier this year by dissidents of the ruling Southwest Africa Peoples Organisation (SWAPO) that it had been forced to call off rallies in the four northern provinces which constitute the country’s majority Ovambo heartland. With a week to go before Namibians vote in the third parliamentary and presidential elections since independence from South Africa in 1990, Rukambe said he had told political leaders not to schedule rallies in the same location at the same time. “These are straightfoward rules. We have avoided violence so far and I have made it very clear that any incidents of violence must be reported to the police so that charges can be brought where necessary,” he said. “In election time it is normal that they lay the blame on one another for their ills.” Political observers in Windhoek told IRIN that the new party, the Congress of Democrats (CoD), was expected to make inroads on SWAPO’s two-thirds majority. The party has been campaigning on a platform of poverty alleviation combined with regular blasts at the government for failing to consult the electorate on its military intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)and over its decision to change the constitution to enable President Sam Nujoma to serve a third five-year term in office. Rukambe said he agreed that this had created what he called a livelier interest in the elections than forecast. It had drawn a surge of last-minute voter registrations in the country of 1.6 million. To date, he said, 847,000 people had registered, several thousand of them in recent days. He said a total of 85 foreign observers representing the European Union, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the UN were now preparing to move across the country to monitor the elections. They will be joined by Namibians selected by the Namibia NGO Forum (Nangof) and the Council of Churches in Namibia (CCN) as part of a project financed by major western donors including Canada, Brtain, The Netherlands and Sweden. Brian Donaldson, the British high commissioner, told a news conference: “Europe is looking with interest to see what happens here. People are very keen that this should be a peaceful election process. Democracy in Namibia is still fragile.” In the only public statement by a western observer so far, he added, that Namibia was of interest to the international community because of its liberal constitution and the peace it has enjoyed since independence. CCN Secretary-General Nangula Kathindi said the church had decided to monitor the elections because it was concerned at the way politicians were “going at each other’s throats”.