General elections were held in

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

on 28 November 2014, although early voting took place in foreign polling stations and for seagoing personnel on 14 November. The elections were the first on the African continent to use

electronic voting Electronic voting (also known as e-voting) is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots. Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone ''electronic voting machines'' ( ...

.Wendell Roelf
"Namibia's ruling party seen winning Africa's first electronic vote"
Reuters, 28 November 2014. A total of nine candidates ran for the presidency, whilst 16 political parties contested the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the rep ...

elections.

Hage Geingob Hage Gottfried Geingob (born 3 August 1941) is a Namibian politician, serving as the third president of Namibia since 21 March 2015. Geingob was the first Prime Minister of Namibia from 1990 to 2002, and served as prime minister again from 201 ...

of the ruling SWAPO party, won the presidential elections with 87% of the vote. SWAPO also won the National Assembly elections, taking 80% of the vote.

Presidential election

Candidates

Originally, incumbent President Pohamba predicted that twenty-two candidates would contest the presidential election. In the end, only nine political parties submitted presidential candidates.

SWAPO

In 2008, the SWAPO Central Committee produced a policy document stating that the party's candidate would be chosen for each election among the top four Committee members. In March 2011 SWAPO declared that whoever was the party's vice-president following the forthcoming party elections would also be the party's candidate in 2014 for president. Some high-level party members, particularly Kazenambo Kazenambo, advocated that SWAPO choose a non-Ovambo candidate, as the first two Presidents,

Sam Nujoma Samuel Shafiishuna Daniel Nujoma, (; born 12 May 1929) is a Namibian revolutionary, anti-apartheid activist and politician who served three terms as the first President of Namibia, from 1990 to 2005. Nujoma was a founding member and the first ...

and Pohamba, were from the

Ovambo people The Ovambo people (), also called Aawambo, Ambo, Aawambo (Ndonga, Nghandjera, Kwambi, Kwaluudhi, Kolonghadhi, Mbalantu), or Ovawambo (Kwanyama) the biggest of the Aawambo sub-tribes are a Bantu peoples, Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Afric ...

. Others advocated the selection of a woman. SWAPO indicated that the candidate would be chosen democratically in the 2012 party election.Presidential race thrown wide open
'' New Era'', 14 March 2011 SWAPO was viewed as the clear favorite going into the election.

Parliamentary election

SWAPO announced a gender equality system where women would fill half of their seats in parliament. The party also embraced what it called a "zebra system", whereby if a minister was a woman, the deputy minister would be a man, and vice versa. Because there were more male SWAPO MPs than female MPs, SWAPO put forward plans to expand parliament to remove the risk of male MPs losing their seats as a result of this gender policy. These changes to the

constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princ ...

were approved a month prior to the election against the votes of opposition parties, as SWAPO had a two-thirds majority in Parliament. Since then, instead of 78 seats (72 elected, 6 appointed) there 104 seats in the National Assembly (96 elected, 8 appointed).

Presidential election

Candidates

SWAPO

Parliamentary election

Results

President

National Assembly

References

External links