Last week’s national elections (November 27-28) in Namibia were, over subsequent days, most commonly contrasted in the media with last year’s tumultuous elections in Kenya. This aimed to maintain patience across an electorate confronted daily since poll closure with a failure to produce the final election results, with successive daily announcements that they’d be ready “tomorrow”.

A full week later, and the results are finally out. In truth, there was never any doubt that the ruling party since independence, SWAPO (South West African People’s Organisation), would overwhelmingly retain its majority in the National Assembly and the Presidency, which was also being voted on. It was clearly assisted in this regard by  13 other parties contesting the polls (11 others for the Presidency), under a first-past-the-post system.

With SWAPO receiving 74% of the national vote, most interest has been in the second-placed Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP) — founded in 2007 as a SWAPO break-away — displacing other more established opposition parties. However, RDP received just 11% support and won no seats, signalling a likely absence of a functioning opposition. (That ubiquitous candidate “informal” out-polled eight of the contesting parties.) Commentators have noted that RDP support came from other opposition parties, making no inroads into SWAPO’s electoral strength.

SWAPO’s victory meant more than 13 losers, however. The biggest loser has been the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN), under mounting criticism for delays and irregularities. ECN reminded the electorate, in turn, of its mandate to get the count right, no straightforward task in a situation where — it has been reported — many electoral officers can’t count. This was hampered by recent amendments to the electoral process that purportedly “complicated” the vote-count verification process.

But, it’s difficult to see why the delays were so protracted. The media have reported that, assuming an 80% voter turnout across the number of polling stations, this meant an average of a mere 800 votes per station. By the fourth day of counting, it was reported that the ECN was flying additional staff to polling stations by helicopter to expedite the count.

Purported irregularities emerged even before the polls opened. The ECN was not able to confirm the actual number of registered voters. On the eve of the elections, it confirmed 822,344 registrations; four days later, it was displaying 1,163,000 voters on its screen. Various people have claimed that the indelible ink easily washed off people’s fingers. The day after the polls closed (Sunday), the media reported that an ECN officer had suicided after handing confidential documents to a party official; soon after, reliable reports stated that the recipient was an opposition party official and the confidential documents were a bundle of completed SWAPO votes for stuffing into ballot boxes (reporting on this has since ceased, presumably pending an official report on the nature of the suicide).

The post-election period started (on Monday November 30) with three ECN officers appearing in court for allegedly opening sealed boxes of voter forms before the formal start of polling. Many party officers have reported large differences between the results posted outside the polling booths at the end of on-site counting and those results subsequently released following the ECN’s “verification” process, and that the verification process lacks transparency.

Before the election, seafarers and those voters living abroad, cast their votes. These were released at the time. Of 40 people casting votes in New York, for example, about three-quarters were reported on national media to have voted for the RDP, prompting the SWAPO youth wing to cite this as evidence that the Namibian ambassador to the UN was a secret RDP supporter and should be removed. It will be interesting to see what transpires for a population that must include several identifiable government and diplomatic personnel.

Barely had the elections ended, than the Southern African Development Community observer mission issued its report that the national elections were “transparent, credible, peaceful, free and fair”. Later in the week, the Pan African Parliament observer mission issued a far more qualified report, with a more detailed report still to come. The editorial of the weekly newspaper Informante dismissed the former group as having come to Namibia to “shop and collect allowances”.

I haven’t yet seen a response to Friday’s report in the daily newspaper, The Namibian, which reveals voter turnout of 96%, with levels of up to 135% voter turnout in the northern SWAPO stronghold constituencies near the Angolan border areas. This contrasts with levels of 40-60% in the southern areas of Namibia. (This report seems to base its calculations on the lower election-eve voter list.)

This was Namibia’s first election open to voters of the “born-free” generation: those born since independence in 1990. Namibian President Hifikepunye Pohamba, of SWAPO, was also comfortably re-elected with 75% of the vote, followed by the RDP candidate on 11%, and “informal” beating seven of the other 10 candidates.