Namibia votes in November 2014
By Ferran Martinez i Coma
The Electoral Integrity Project, University of Sydney
A conference “Detecting
and Deterring Electoral Fraud and Malpractices in Africa” was held in
Windhoek (Namibia) from 12 to 15 May. The
event was organized by the Hanns Seidel
Foundation and the Institute for Public
Policy Research and it brought together a combination of Africanist
scholars and practitioners. Namibians will held Presidential and Legislative elections in November. The South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) has been in power since Namibia independence in 1990, constantly increasing its advantage with its competitors.
The first session focused on concepts of fraud and
malpractice. Hermann
Thiel, Country Director of IFES in
Jordan, building in previous works from his colleagues, gave a very clear conceptualization
of fraud and malpractices. He then graphically presented a typology of the
problems that may happen considering the intensity of the impact of the problem
and the vulnerability. Discussants Roger Southall, from
the University of Witwatersrand (South
Africa), and Denis
Kadima, the Executive Director of EISA
(South Africa) gave their respective insights. Southall described different
types of fraud and he also highlighted the absence of comparative studies on
gerrymandering.
In the second session, different participants exposed clear
manifestations of electoral malpractice and fraud. David Coltart, from Zimbabwe,
highlighted the problems with the registry; Tom Mboya mentioned
problems of voter disenfranchisement in Kenya while Professor Alexander Kaakyire Frempong
from Ghana exposed the problem of registration of foreigners. There were also
interventions covering Nigeria and South Africa.
The third session was on detecting the presence of fraud and
malpractice. I presented the results of PEI and highlighted that problems of
fraud and electoral malpractice may emerge at any point of the electoral cycle.
I also emphasized the problems on finance and media while presenting the
results of PEI in a regional comparative perspective. Halfdan Lynge-Mangueira,
from Oxford University, presented the main question of his dissertation
–namely, why did politicians in advanced democracies stopped rigging elections-
and with his theoretical framework he presented his research on Ghana.
Halfdan’s state of the art work mixes quantitative with qualitative analyses.
We closed the first day with a public event on electoral
integrity of Africa that was open to the public. Besides the presenters, Dr.
Paul Isaak, Director of Elections of the Electoral
Commission of Namibia gave the keynote address on the Namibian elections.
After the presentations, the audience engaged in a very lively and rich
conversation with Dr. Isaak.
The second day was oriented towards improving electoral
integrity. In the first session, Dr Seema
Shah, currently working as an analyst at AfriCOG
(Kenya), showed us how the argument of the peaceful elections held in Kenya
last year was used to silence the fraud in many stances. Shah’s uses Pippa
Norris concept of electoral integrity as well as Judith Kelley’s work on
monitor observation. Shah and her team have exposed numerous problems of the
elections in Kenya. Her work is a beautiful application of academic concepts
into real world situations.
In the second section, Ushahidi
founder, Daudi Were,
explained how he and his colleagues decided to create a platform to expose and
improve how the elections were conducted. Ushahidi’s approach is through very
simple technology that is not only been used in elections but also in
humanitarian catastrophes. One of the principle of Ushahidi is making all
voices count and their approach can be extremely useful for crowdsourcing
studies.
The last and finals session was devoted to propose
suggestions and ideas to be implemented in Namibia. The ideas proposed were
divided for the short, medium and long term, since Namibians will go to vote on
November 2014.
On the short term the most
relevant suggestions were: make clear and public the playing field: at this
point, Namibians do not know under which electoral formula will be voting;
draft and publish an observation guideline to be shared with the different
Namibian civil society groups; use Ushaidi’s knowledge to prepare a platform
for citizens.
On the medium and the long term,
the focus was on voter education as well on training of the different actors
involved in the Namibian elections.
The EIP project will follow the general and presidential elections
in Namibia and next year we will be able to report about their 2014 elections.
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