Political System of Namibia

Politics of Namibia takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Namibia is both head of state and head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Cabinet appointed by the president from among the members of the National Assembly

Legislative power is vested in both the government and the two chambers of parliament, with National Assembly as lower house consists of 72 member plus 6 (72 members elected by proportional representation and 6 members appointed by the president and members are elected by popular vote to serve five-year terms) and National Council as upper house (house of review) with 26 (two members are chosen from each regional council to serve six-year terms). Namibia also has 13 Regional Councils with Local Authorities consists of 48 members.

In Namibia there are 4 elections with 3 systems. Presidential Elections with majoritarian system, National Assembly with Proportional Representative (PR) System, Regional Council with First Past the Post System and Local Authority with Proportional Representative with transition to ward system.

In Presidential Elections, voters vote directly for the different candidates. The candidate who receives the most votes is elected, provided that candidate has a clear majority (50%+1) of the votes. If no candidate is elected with a more than 50% of the votes in the first round, a subsequent election is held between the two candidates with the highest number of votes, until one candidate wins a clear majority. Since the President received a clear majority in all the previous elections in Namibia, a second round has never happened. President will run the office for a five-year term (eligible for a second term).

In National Assembly elections, a PR system with party list is used. Parties each present a list of up to 72 candidates to the Electoral Commission. The seats are divided among the parties proportionally. Seats are allocated by establishing the quota of votes required for one seat. The quota is calculated by dividing all the votes cast by the total number of seats in the National Assembly (72 seats). After all the seats have been allocated using these quotas, the remaining seats are allocated to the parties with the largest remainder.

In Regional Council elections, candidates run in separate single member constituencies. The candidate who won the highest number of votes wins the seat for the specific constituency, i.e. the “First Past The Post (FPTP) System. One candidate can win only 40% of the votes in the constituency, but may still win the seat if there were four other candidates who each won 15% of the vote. If this is the pattern across a country, or across a region or municipality, it can happen that a party wins a majority of the seats, even though the party did not win a majority of the votes.

For Local Authority elections, a PR system is used. Parties present a different candidates’ list for each local authority, with voters from that municipality being able to choose between the different parties. According to the Local Authority Act of 1992, only two elections were to be held using this type of electoral system. The 2003 local government elections were to be conducted using a ward system. For each ward, only one representative would be elected to the Local Authority. This plan was dropped and the Act changed in 2002 to continue the PR System.

For Judicial Branch of Namibia, the highest judicial body is the Supreme Court, whose judges are appointed by the president on the recommendation of the Judicial Service Commission. The judicial structure in Namibia parallels that of South Africa. In 1919, Roman-Dutch law was declared the common law of the territory and remains so to the present.