EDITORIAL: Swapo must respect electoral court ruling

For years, the opposition in Namibia was blamed, sometimes correctly, of tainting the credibility of our elections.

This is because even when there was no shred of evidence of rigging or manipulation, they climbed on mountaintops to seek international sympathy by spewing lies about being cheated in favour of Swapo.

Yesterday the unthinkable happened. Swapo invited the press to announce that they will abstain from the process of recounting ballots in the botched Ndonga Linena regional council election held last year.

The ruling party says there was a “calculated agenda” against it, after the electoral court found that the counting process was dubious.

Swapo is stealing the shine away from the opposition by being the new crybabies over electoral outcomes when margins against them are paper-thin.

The former liberation movement has every right to express its discontent. That terrain is not reserved for the opposition only.

But the ruling party cannot deviate from the order of the court – that a recount must take place instead of a fresh election.

The very constitution that Swapo brags on having brought about makes provision for different recourses that the party can embark upon.

One such recourse is to challenge the ruling, in court and not in the boardroom, to seek a fresh election in Ndonga Linena.

But even from the courts, which have never allowed fresh elections when odds were in favour of Swapo, ordering a new rerun would be unprecedented.