Opposition youth to march today

YOUTH members of eight opposition parties will organise a protest march this morning to express their dissatisfaction with the results of the past national and presidential elections and to hand over a petition to the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN).

‘We will gather first at a spot in Katutura and will then proceed to the city centre around 09h00 to march towards the headquarters of the ECN,’ Agapitus Hausiku of the All People’s Party (APP) told The Namibian on Wednesday. ‘We will deliver a petition to the ECN to state our displeasure about the election results,’ Hausiku added. According to him, the youth leagues of the RDP, RP, UDF, DTA, APP, Nudo, Swanu and CoD will mobilise their members for the protest. ‘After we have handed over the petition to the ECN, we will all walk over to the nearby High Court building and wait there as the case of our eight political parties against the ECN is most likely to start there on Friday,’ Hausiku told The Namibian.The youth wings of these eight parties briefed the media about their march on Tuesday, saying many of them were first-time voters and highly disappointed about the election results, which did not truly reflect the will of the people, they claim. ‘The election results have been cooked to favour the ruling Swapo party,’ said Clarence Eichab of the UDF youth league. ‘The youth of Namibia are determined to put an end to the contraventions by the ECN and the Swapo Party for elections to be conducted in a free and fair manner,’ Eichab read from a joint statement of the eight youth leagues.’The ECN violated Namibia’s constitution to allow fraud to take place,’ he alleged.’In the face of overwhelming evidence of irregularities with the just ended election results announced by the ECN, we of the many political parties are of the opinion that the announced results are not the true reflection of the will of the Namibian people. Most of us are first-time voters and were very excited to vote but at the end were very disappointed – why? It took five days for the results to be announced and there were many irregularities during the election process,’ Eichab claimed. ‘Many more (first-time voters) are determined to show the world that we will no longer allow our democracy to be compromised.’ According to RDP youth league member Nicanor Ndjoze, ‘our mandate has been denied.’Lawyers of the said eight opposition parties notified the ECN last Saturday that they would lodge a High Court action against the electoral body for allegedly ‘contravening the Electoral Act’.The parties said they had collected enough evidence of alleged irregularities which satisfied their lawyers and was sufficient to start the court action. A matter which had particularly irked the opposition parties and they said they had no knowledge of beforehand was that the ECN ordered counted ballot papers from polling stations to be sent to so-called ‘constituency verification centres’ for verification.The Electoral Act does not mention any such centres, the opposition parties claim.