Namibians abroad who live far from Namibian diplomatic missions complain that they have to travel long distances to register as voters.
Despite this, the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) says it will not meet them halfway and all eligible voters should make the effort to travel to Namibian embassies, high commissions or consulates.
According to the ECN Namibians, especially students studying in China and Russia, have complained about having to travel far to the missions in Beijing and Moscow to register.
In China most complaints came from students in the province of Liaoning which is a seven-hour drive (680 km) from Beijing, and Nanjing, which is more than 1 000 km (11 hours) from the Namibian mission.
Shanghai, Chongqing and Wuhan are even further and Namibians living in those cities will have to travel more than 1 700 km, which is a 19-hour drive, to register.
Students studying in Alchevsk and Lugansk in the Ukraine will have to travel to the Russian capital Moscow in order to register.
“For this current general voter registration we will only operate from our missions where registration points have been established,” said ECN director of operations Theo Mujoro.
“In the future the Commission may consider establishing registrations at some of these points but only on advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the number of eligible Namibians there.”
A total of 972 eligible Namibians of voting age living outside the country have registered so far.
The highest number of registrations was done in Cape Town, South Africa, where 536 Namibians turned up to register, compared to only 27 in Pretoria.
In China, 62 voters have registered, in Malaysia 51, Russia 32, Austria and Zimbabwe 25, and 23 registered at Ondjiva in Angola.
The lowest figures were recorded Japan and Cuba – three, Menongwe, Angola – five, Democratic Republic of Congo and Brazil – six and France, Germany, Tanzania and Sweden - all with eight.
No single Namibian has registered so far in Egypt.
“When the registration process started, Egypt was conducting a referendum, it was some sort of holiday, and our missions were held at up customs,” explained Mujoro.
“We only started with registration in Egypt mid-last week and by the time of publishing these latest results we had not received any statistics from them.”
Mujoro said he has it on good authority that there are only ten Namibians in Egypt and registering them could be done within a day.
He added that those who do not get an opportunity to register during this round of registration still have a chance to do so during the supplementary voter registration shortly before the elections.
The current registration campaign ends in March.
WINDHOEK ELVIS MURARANGANDA
