THE
Rally for Democracy and Progress, the Workers Revolutionary Party and an active
lay litigant in Namibia's courts, are calling for the Electoral Court to stop
the national elections at the end of this week.
The
case in which the RDP, WRP, lay litigant August Maletzky and his organisation,
the African Labour & Human Rights Centre are trying to get the election put
on hold until February next year is due to be heard in the electoral Court in
Windhoek on Tuesday.
The
two political parties, Maletzky and the centre, want the court to declare all
the by-elections and elections of 2014, where the voters had to use EVM's so
far, as null and void, direct the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN), which
is the first respondent, to run a transparent and credible election on or
before the end of February 2015 or within a reasonable time period as the court
sees fit. They also want ECN to discontinue the use of the EVM's without the
utilisation of a variable paper trail for every vote cast by a voter, amongst
other demands. The applicants have also named all the other fourteen other
parties as respondents in the application, as well as the government, which is
the second respondent.
In an
affidavit filed with the court, Maletzky claims that the use of EVMs without a
verifiable paper trail would leave the door open for election rigging.
Maletzky
claims that “in view of previous elections characterised by election fraud and
rigging by the Ruling Party Swapo, and the Election Commission of Namibia, the
sinister and scandalous motives underwriting the deliberate purchase of these
EVM'S become clearer i.e. to rig the elections”, (sic) he said.
Reacting
to the application, Law Reform and Development Commission chairperson Sacky
Shanghala on Monday said their application was totally “outlandish to say the
least”.
“They
participated in the previous by-elections so there's no urgency in the
application,” he said yesterday.
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