National Assembly approves ECN nominees

The National Assembly has approved President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s three nominees to the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) after securing the minimum 49-member voting quorum required to complete a process stalled by an opposition walkout a week earlier.

Gerson Sindano was approved as the new ECN chairperson, while Emmerentia Leonard and Julieta Diva Ferreira were approved as commissioners during a sitting presided over by deputy speaker Phillipus Katamelo on Tuesday.

All 49 MPs who participated supported the nominations, giving the governing party precisely the number needed for the National Assembly to make a valid decision.

Most opposition MPs walked out before the vote after Katamelo ruled that the House would resume the process from where it had collapsed on 1 September. United Democratic Front MP Nico Somaeb reportedly remained the only opposition member.

The dispute centred on whether MPs should have been allowed to resume debating the nominations or whether the House could proceed directly to the vote.

The order paper described the item as the “resumption of debate” on the nominations of Sindano, Leonard and Ferreira.

Opposition MPs consequently argued that the matter should have been reopened for further debate before another attempt was made to vote.

Katamelo ruled that the process had reached the voting stage on 1 September and should continue from that point because the earlier proceedings had been interrupted by the loss of a quorum.

“We had a point of voting. The voting collapsed, isn’t it? And that’s where we’ll start,” he told the House.

Swanu president Evilastus Kaaronda disputed that interpretation, saying the previous walkout had been prompted by the way the House moved towards a vote without allowing the debate to continue.

Other opposition members argued that a failed parliamentary process could not simply be revived where it collapsed. They questioned why the order paper referred to resuming debate if no further debate would be permitted.

Katamelo maintained that an interrupted item should resume from the stage it had reached.

“The ruling is I have to put the question so that we can conclude the debate where it stopped. Whenever you have an agenda point and it ends, you start where it ended,” he said.

Opposition MPs subsequently left the chamber, after which parliamentary officials counted the members who remained and confirmed that the House had reached the required voting quorum of 49.

The nominees were then approved without a dissenting vote or abstention among the MPs who participated.

First vote collapsed

During the 1 September sitting, opposition MPs walked out after objecting to the procedure used to bring the nominations to a vote.

Only 46 members remained in the chamber, three fewer than the 49 required for a decision. Of those present, 45 supported the nominations, and one abstained, but Speaker Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila ruled that no decision had been taken because the House lacked a voting quorum.

The failure forced parliament to return the nominations to the order paper.

Information and communication technology minister Emma Theofelus later criticised MPs who abandoned proceedings, arguing that the walkout wasted parliamentary time and prevented elected representatives from fulfilling their responsibilities.

Opposition parties defended the tactic as a legitimate way to prevent decisions they opposed when government could not independently produce the constitutionally required quorum.

Resistance to the nominations began before the September walkouts, with opposition MPs demanding access to documents underlying the selection process.