ECN explains its election arrangements

THE ECN is at the highest level of readiness for the November Presidential and National Assembly elections. More that 96% of the preparatory activities constituting the final phase of our preparations under the theme of voting operations is proceeding according to schedule and deadlines of the ECN’s electoral calendar.

These activities consist of:

• Training of polling officers

• Deployment of electoral infrastructure, logistics and voting materials;

• printing and dispatching of the ballot papers to the polling stations;

• cleaning up of the Voters’ Register; and

• polling, counting and announcement of results.

Generally, our preparations over the last two years evolved around six components known as the legal framework, planning and operations, recruitment and training, voter registration and democracy building and voter education.

I will therefore present my report around those six thematic components.

Legal Framework
 
This component merely focuses on creating an enabling environment for the conducting of free, fair and transparent elections. For example, the Electoral Act was successfully amended to close potential gaps.

The new electoral environment has made voting for sea-going personnel and Namibian citizens abroad possible. I am happy to report that voting last Friday, 13 November, 2009 for seagoing personnel and Namibians outside the country went extremely smooth.

The voters expressed in a dignified manner their votes in the Presidential and National Assembly elections. All polling stations opened on time and all aspects of the election process were carried out in full compliance of the law.

Planning and operations
 
This component was considered to be at the heart of the whole electoral project. It defined and identified strategic objectives as well as the resources and logistics required to implement them. Under this component, a number of strategic planning workshops and retreats were completed to plan the successful implementation of the process.

As part of our planning and preparation to fulfill the final phase of the election which is voting operation, a two day strategic retreat took place in Swakopmund for the period 16 and 17 October 2009. We were able to examine the areas that needed more attention and to develop clear guidelines on how to implement the remaining activities, the financial and human resources that would be required, the revised dates for completing activities, as well as the prospects of fulfilling the electoral mandate, the potential problems in the way and the progress achieved up to date.

I can comfortably report that we are happy with the progress achieved.

Recruitment and training
 

This component specifically provided human resource development and capacity through recruitment and training of registration and polling staff.

As I am speaking today, we are providing the final phase of training to polling officials at regional level. The ECN has identified training as one of the most critical area that will determine the success of the electoral process specifically polling, counting and announcement of results.

We are also in the process of making mock elections a crucial component of the training that we are providing to the polling staff.

Voter registration
 
This programme embodies all aspects of both continuous and supplementary voter registrations.

Most of its activities were carried out at regional and constituency levels and they included the identification of registration points, registering voters and updating of the register with data obtained through the supplementary voter registration. We experienced some hiccups during the supplementary voter registration that was mainly due to the late arrival of registration materials from South Africa.

But remedial measures were agreed with political parties to rectify the situation. Finally, more registrants than ever before, were captured during supplementary voter registration.

Democracy building and voter education
 
Section 13 of the Electoral Act (Act 24 of 1992) stipulates that the ECN must conduct general voter’s registration after every ten years.

Within this context, the ECN is expected to carry out an intensive national voter education and information campaigns utilising mass media, and voter educators with the aim of:

• Cultivate a culture of human rights, national reconciliation, political tolerance and participation in governance and electoral processes;

• promoting a sound understanding of the process; and

• mobilising resources for the conducting of voters’ education. This programme focuses on information campaigns aimed at mobilising eligible voters to register and cast their votes.

It is a cross-cutting project that intersects with voter registration while media related functions such as public relations, corporate affairs and media briefings are sometimes handled by the Commissioners, Chief Executive Officer , media consultant or Deputy Director of Operations.

Our votereducation and information campaigns have targeted the socially marginalised groups such as the people living with disabilities, rural people, youth and people living in informal settlement s.

Our campaign has been around the theme that since Namibians were franchised to vote for the first time in November 1989 through the UN supervised elections, this year’s voting will represent twenty years of our universal suffrage.

As a result, more Namibians are motivated to vote and to express their choice.

Voting operations
 
This component represents the final phase of election planning and it mainly involves training and deployment of polling officials, securing and deployment of vehiclesand logistics such as voting materials, nomination of political parties and candidates, identification of polling points, as well as voting, counting and announcement of results. Most of the activities are beingcompleted according to stipulated deadlines in our calendar.

We have identified 997 fixed polling stations together with 2 213 mobile polling stations bringing a total number of polling stations to an exact figure of 3 210 that will require a total number of Teams amounting to 1 530 to conduct the polling. This figure has been presented to and accepted by political parties.

Out of fourteen parties contesting for National Assembly, twelve of them will take part in the Presidential elections. There will be no independent candidates. In terms of the printing of ballot papers, REN-FORM, a company based in South Africa, has won the tender.

The printing process went under the watchful eyes of political parties and the final delivery was made on Saturday 31 October, 2009. A total of 290 000 votersregistered during the supplementary registration process included duplicates and voters who changed addresses.

The voters’ roll was displayed for objections and objections were received from some of the regions. Verification for duplicates and deceased was completed last week and the final voter’s register was provided to political parties and all the partners such as media and civic organization in an electronic form.

We are currently in the process of dispatching both sensitive and non-sensitive voting materials to the votingvenues.

Guidelines for observers
 
Since Namibia is a free and democratic state, these guidelines must not be construed as restrictions in terms of movement and areas of choice, but to only provide observers with relevant information relating to knowing the areas in which they will observe, where the voting stations are, emergency numbers for the police and ambulance service, the Code of Conduct and circumstances that under only extreme conditions could result in the suspension of accreditation.

We do not expect that to happen unless we are forced by peculiar circumstances to do so.

Under normal circumstances, we expect the observers not to do the following:

• Disrupt or interfere with the voting process;

• take photos that may reveal the voter’s choice;

• express views on any matter that is subject to the electoral campaigns, programmes and activities of contestants; or

• wear, carry or display any party’s symbols or colours. Generally, observers are expected to observe elections impartially and independently without showing any inclination of bias. They are expected to be fair judges of the process.