Background
Elections are an essential feature of any democracy. Elections give voice to the political will of the people. The right to participate in government directly or through freely chosen representatives is also enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (article 21.1) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (article 25). While elections are an important feature in any democracy, they also need to be meaningful and credible, and they must represent the free will of the people. Thus, the electoral processes, especially those related to the registration, polling, counting, transmission and determination of results, comprehensively need to protect and safeguard the interests of both the voters and candidates.
This makes monitoring elections an important, if not a strategic undertaking, especially for political parties and candidates. Free, fair and credible elections contribute to electoral integrity. This, therefore, emphasises the need for the contestants (political parties and candidates) to invest in setting up an effective infrastructure and mechanism for election monitoring through recruitment and capacity building of reliable persons to play a role in the monitoring of elections at all levels as well as mobilisation of adequate financial resources for such a critical exercise.
It is against this background that as part of this initiative and building on its regional experiences, DWF will enhance political parties' capacities to meaningfully and constructively participate in the upcoming general elections by facilitating comprehensive cross-party training for election monitoring. This training will also seek to enhance the political parties' understanding of the legal framework and electoral processes to ensure that their election monitoring is done according to the relevant laws and procedures. The capacity-building support will be provided in the form of Training of Trainers (TOTs) on poll watching that will target 16 Master Trainers per each of the ten political parties participating in the November 2024 elections, totalling 160 Masters.
The Master Trainers will, in turn, be expected to cascade downstream with similar training for their party poll agents and officials who will monitor the elections. DWF will facilitate these trainings in a series of four (4) cohorts that will target four participants per party per cohort. As elections will be held on 27 November 2024, DWF plans to undertake this series of training from 8 to 17 October 2024.
Aims and Objectives of the Training Workshops
Given that party agents are the eyes and ears of the parties contesting the elections, their training is recognised as pivotal in ensuring a credible and widely accepted election outcome, hence safeguarding electoral integrity. The Training workshops will target political party's "Master Trainers" for poll watching. These are the representatives of the respective parties.
Parties will nominate and plan to use them to train other party poll agents and monitors. The knowledge and skills gained through the Training of Trainers (TOTs) workshops are expected to assist the Master Trainers in cascading similar training downstream within their respective political parties.
Specifically, the political party election monitoring TOTs shall aim to achieve the following:
- To orient and train the nominated party master trainers on poll-watching
- Drawing on lessons from DWFs practical experiences in conducting similar capacity-building initiatives in Malawi, Zambia and Angola to provide practical examples and tips for setting up an adequate political party election monitoring infrastructure and system
- To impart knowledge and enhance the level of understanding of the participants on key thematic areas, including the following
- Understanding the importance of election monitoring in enhancing the credibility of elections
- Understanding the legal framework of Namibia with regard to poll watching and the role of political parties in this context
- Qualities of a poll agent, their roles and responsibilities
- Dos and don'ts in election monitoring
- Polling station and tally centres procedures and processes
- Procedures for logging complaints
- Poll agent's deployment strategies and communication plans
- Increase the master trainers' awareness and understanding of the electoral processes that the poll agents will need to familiarise themselves with to enable them (poll agents/monitors) to effectively play their roles in safeguarding the interests of their respective political parties.
Practical Information
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The Training of Trainers will be cross-party, and target registered political parties contesting in the upcoming elections. The training will be conducted in a four-part series that will take place at the Hilton Garden Inn in Windhoek as follows:
Cohort 1: Arrival on 07 October 2024. Training dates 08 - 09 October 2024. Departure on 10 October 2024
Cohort 2: Arrival on 09 October 2024. Training dates 10 - 11 October 2024. Departure on 12 October 2024
Cohort 3: Arrival on 13 October 2024. Training dates 14 - 15 October 2024. Departure on 16 October 2024
Cohort 4: Arrival on 15 October 2024. Training dates are 16 - 17 October 2024. Departure on 18 October 2024
The programme aims to train sixteen (16) master trainers from each party, who will be responsible for cascading the knowledge to their respective party agents. Each party is, therefore, expected to send four (4) Master trainers to each cohort. The master trainers will also be responsible for coordinating the next steps in implementing the party agent training within their respective parties.
