Poll challenges likely to await Supreme Court ruling

The Electoral Court is considering putting the National Assembly poll challenge of the Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) on hold until the Supreme Court has decided a similar case about the 2024 Presidential election. According to The Namibian, the court is due to give a ruling today on the further course the IPC’s legal challenge of the National Assembly election will take, after the party’s election application did not proceed as initially planned on Thursday. Judges Hannelie Prinsloo, Orben Sibeya and Esi Schimming-Chase did not hear oral arguments on the merits of the challenge, after they requested lawyers involved in the matter to first address them on a question whether the party’s case in the Electoral Court should not be put on hold. In both of its election challenges, the IPC is targeting the proclamation in which President Nangolo Mbumba extended voting in the National Assembly and Presidential polls. The elections were initially scheduled to take place only on 27 November, before Mbumba extended voting in the elections to 29 and 30 November as well. The IPC is asking the Electoral Court to declare Mbumba’s proclamation as inconsistent with the Constitution and the Electoral Act, and as invalid.

The party is also asking the court to declare that votes cast in the National Assembly election on 29 and 30 November and the conduct of the election were inconsistent with the Constitution and the Electoral Act, and invalid. South African -based senior counsel Anton Katz, who is leading the IPC’s team of lawyers, told the judges the party supports having its challenge of the National Assembly election put on hold until the Supreme Court has decided the legal challenge of the Presidential election. The same argument being made in the Electoral Court about Mbumba’s proclamation will be made in the Supreme Court when the IPC’s challenge of the Presidential election is heard on 10 February, Katz said, reports The Namibian. If the Supreme Court concludes that the proclamation was unlawful, the Electoral Court will be bound by that decision and will then be required to decide how that finding will affect the National Assembly election, Katz also says in his written arguments. Senior counsel Raymond Heathcote, representing the President, Gerson Narib, who is representing the Electoral Commission of Namibia, and Sisa Namandje, on behalf of Swapo, were all opposed to the case being put on hold. An election challenge should be decided without delay, Namandje argued.

Full report in The Namibian