THE entire staff and the directors of the Electoral Commission of Namibia should be fired, the Chairman of the DTA of Namibia said yesterday, alleging incompetence.

The DTA joined the chorus of RDP, Swanu and Republican Party (RP), which told reporters on Saturday night that the indelible ink put on voters' fingers to prevent them voting again had washed off several of their party members on Friday and Saturday.

"The ECN staff should be fired forthwith because having ink that washes off instead of the ECN making sure that the ink is really indelible shows their incompetence. The same happened in 2004," Johan De Waal said yesterday.

He said his party would send a letter to President Hifikepunye Pohamba to ask him to remove the staff of the ECN and get competent professionals appointed to that body.

The other complaint the four parties had was that they received a new voters' roll on CD-ROM on Thursday afternoon, which listed only 822 344 voters compared to the 1 181 835 voters on another CD-ROM issued to political parties on November 14.

In October, the ECN announced that 1,3 million voters were on the roll.

"With the new voter figure received Thursday, we see a disappearance of 477 650 voters, nearly half a million," said DTA Secretary General McHenry Venaani on Sunday.

Jesaya Nyamu, Secretary General of the RDP, said on Saturday night that one mobile polling station (Number 301) in the northern Ohangwena Region did not put the official stamp of the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) on ballot papers.

"This makes them spoilt votes," Nyamu said.

"We notified the ECN about these and other incidents, but no action was taken," Nyamu said, flanked by Cap Gaeseb (RP) and RDP administrative official Libolly Haufiku.

Other complaints were that election observers of opposition parties were not allowed to sleep in some polling stations on Friday night, while at other polling stations it was allowed.

"The four parties - RDP, RP, DTA and Swanu - will compile a dossier about all irregularities we recorded over the two voting days and make them public early in the week. The credibility of free and fair elections is compromised," he added.

During the Saturday press conference at a Windhoek hotel, a young man arrived and distributed a press release of the Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL), which also claimed election irregularities.

The SPYL claimed that at the Van Rhyn School and Rocky Crest polling stations in Windhoek polls closed around 20h30 on Friday night instead of 21h00, "thereby turning away potential voters who arrived just after that time".

Potential voters were allegedly turned away "at a certain time during voting hours at the Katutura Police station", the SPYL claimed in the press release, but did not say on which day that happened.

Thus regularities on the roll should not be criticised by the RDP, the SPYL said.