Rigging elections

By Asser Ntinda

The opposition parties were battered in last year’s National Assembly and Presidential elections by SWAPO Party. They disputed the outcome and chose the legal route – their democratic right to do so. And they waited. While they were waiting, Okahandja by-election presented itself. This time around, eight parties came together and formed a loose coalition to “unseat” SWAPO Party from power. They were shown the exit door again, individually and collectively.

Thursday’s High Court judgment, which dismissed with costs, the application by nine opposition parties to have last year’s National Assembly and Presidential elections declared “null and void, set aside and have ballots cast and elections recounted” must have fallen on them like a thunderbolt. The lessons learned, they must never forget. Anyone seeking to challenge elections’ outcome of any nature must do his or her homework properly. The alternative is a costly fishing expedition, as the nine opposition parties have learned.

For three months, Namibians were treated like pawns on a political chessboard. With their votes, which they cast freely and fairly, being made the subject of the High Court, they had every reason to be impatient. They have been tested to the limit on flimsy allegations. The reason the High Court had been packed to capacity from day one to the last amplified that patience. It was therefore not by accident that Judge President Petrus Damaseb commended them for the orderly manner and the patience they displayed while waiting for the High Court to pronounce itself on the poll challenge. It has been a long wait, which had them guessing as what and how the outcome would be.

An election challenge is no trivial matter. Nations have gone to war precisely because of that. When UNITA’s Jonas Savimbi rejected the outcome of Angola’s National Assembly and Presidential elections in the early 1990s, which he and UNITA lost freely and fairly, many innocent Angolans, children and women, perished in that senseless civil war that resumed shortly after the elections. It was Savimbi’s insatiable hunger for power that put his ego above national interest and national safety, not that elections there were “rigged and doctored” to favour one of the contesting parties.

Similarly, when the Rally for Democracy and Progress, RDP, together with eight other political parties, decided to challenge the outcome of our elections, many Namibians held their breath in disbelief, wondering as to what really was going on. Ours was not a neck-to-neck election, as had been the case in other countries. None of the contesting parties ever came closer to SWAPO Party to warrant a court challenge. SWAPO Party scored 602 580 votes. The nearest runner, RDP, only got 90 556 votes. Like Savimbi in Angola, RDP’s Hidipo Hamutenya, is being driven by his insatiable hunger for power. That is the seed that has driven many countries into endless bloody civil wars. It is the Savimbi syndrome of “either I win or the elections are not fair” that has overwhelmed Hidipo’s ego. Such a tendency is very dangerous in a democracy.

Rigging elections is a systematic and well organized process. Our electoral process is so tight – with checks and balances well in place – that rigging elections will never go unspotted. Moreover, each political party contesting any election posts agents at every polling station to oversee the whole process from the start to the end, under the watchful eye of the Police. What were Hidipo’s arguments to substantiate the application in Court?

Libolly Haufiku’s “founding” affidavit is littered with unsubstantiated allegations of irregularities, which if and when tested in a court, would dismally fail to build up a strong case of irregularities amounting to rigging an election. The Electoral Act stipulates that an election challenge can be substantive only when an applicant shows that there is material evidence such irregularities might have influenced the outcome of an election to unduly favour one of the contesting parties. This was missing in their application.

Haufiku’s affidavit is littered with matters of administrative nature, such as people appearing twice on the voters’ roll; dead people appearing on the voters’ roll and so on. Nothing in that affidavit shows that the elections were rigged here and there, or that there was ballot stuffing. As I have said earlier, how on earth would dead people ever vote? Even if they were to come and vote, how would Haufiku know that they were going to vote for SWAPO? The whole application was haphazardly carelessly prepared. It was filed after deadlines and the nonpayment of security on the Presidential election challenge, weakened, not strengthened, the applicants’ case. Dismissal with costs is a result of such carelessness.

The High Court verdict marks the end of Hidipo’s long dance on the verge of a volcano. Battered at the polls and humiliated in Court, the “coalition” he has been trying to midwife since last year has hit a snag. Hidipo has created more problems for the opposition parties than he has solved. At one go, he has become a liability, not an asset. None of the parties he has cobbled together in the coalition would ever entertain his antics anymore. Like the domino theory, his coalition is falling apart like a castle built in the air. Accept that you have lost the plot. Your long march to State House is nose-diving, shredded before your eyes.

For decades, you have set your eyes on that highest political trophy – the Presidency. You, have, however, been careless in nurturing that journey. You have webbed your own downfall. Like campaign strategies of many ordinary run off the mill politicians the world has ever seen, yours, too, has become a liability. It is a confused amalgam of anti-SWAPO and anti-Nujoma diatribes.

As your political career comes down crashing, accept that there is honour in accepting defeat. You have been defeated freely and fairly. The onus is now on your shoulder to display some degree of magnanimity. Therein lies the celebration of our humanity. SWAPO Party beats. And it absolutely beats, as you now have seen. You should know better.