New court challenge to election results

Two Namibian opposition parties have filed a court application to have the November national polls declared null and void, or to have all the 830,000 ballots recounted. Last week the Republican Party (RP) and the Congress of Democrats (CoD) won a court order to peruse official election documentation to substantiate their claims of election irregularities, after the Electoral Commission had refused them access to the documents. Following a review of more than 60,000 pages of election documentation, the parties said that on more than one occasion they had found large discrepancies between the voting results reported by individual polling stations and the number of voters registered at those stations. "The respondents now have 14 days to reply [by 3 January 2005], if they oppose our application", said opposition party lawyer Neels Verwey. The Electoral Commission has given notice that it intends to appeal last week's court ruling in favour of the opposition. "We received a notice this afternoon", an official of the Supreme Court told IRIN on Tuesday. "The Electoral Commission now has 30 days to prepare their declaration [as to] why they appeal, but the next session of the Supreme Court only starts in April next year", the official said.