The hearing of the application to have Electoral Commission of Namibia documentation related to November's elections handed over to nine opposition political parties was postponed to next Tuesday in the High Court on Friday.
The nine political parties, citing "irregularities", approached the court to be granted access to the ECN materials related to November 27 and 28's Presidential and National Assembly elections. If granted access, the parties will instigate an independent audit of the elections results and will then either accept the results as they were announced on December 4 by the ECN or approach the courts to have the late November election results set aside.
The hearing was postponed to next Tuesday because the government attorneys representing the ECN, which is the first respondent in the case, had not had enough time to go through the application and file a responding affidavit. Lawyers representing the nine political parties agreed to the postponement.
Chief amongst the issues listed in the parties' filing affidavit, before High Court Judge Collins Parker, is the state of the voters roll used by electoral authorities for the recent elections. Besides this, the parties list what they consider substantial irregularities, without going into detail on these issues.
The main applicant in the case to heard on Tuesday, December 22, is the Rally for Democracy and Progress (RDP), which has secured official opposition status with November's elections results.
Election Watch is a project of the Institute for Public Policy Research in Windhoek, Namibia.