Independent presidential hopeful Ally Angula says she has been inconvenienced by the Electoral Commission of Namibia’s (ECN) “faulty” system, which has delayed her submission of the required number of signatures.
ECN chairperson Elsie Nghikembua on Wednesday announced Angula’s disqualification from a list of registered presidential candidates, citing that she and two other independent candidates had not ticked all boxes for the upcoming elections.
They were consequently given 24 hours to submit the required number of signatures.
However, Angula says the ECN’s machines ‘stole’ six of her 24 hours.
“Functional system access was only available from 20h04 on Wednesday evening, making it even harder to complete the task for the regions, where the required 500 [signatures] have been obtained,” Angula says.
Angula and her team assert that they have captured 5 063 signatures but functional system access only being granted after 20h00 made it humanly impossible to capture all the signatures.
“The system was not tested to assess how many days it would take to capture 7 000 names,” she adds.
ECN spokesperson De Wet Siluka disputes that the issue lies with the ECN’s system.
“No, it’s not true. It’s the same system the parties are using. They will know what’s delaying them. They must just be honest,” he says.
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