Some political party representatives who accompanied the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) to Johannesburg to observe the printing of ballot papers for the upcoming November elections have voiced concerns over the transparency of the process. 

The nbc News team spoke to various party delegates who bemoaned the alleged restricted access to critical stages of ballot production and limited opportunities to ask questions, which they felt interfered with their ability to properly observe the processes.

UDF representative Daniel Tsaneb said, 
"The political parties must send their representatives to observe, not inspect; it must be clear: observe the processes of designing, printing, packaging, and transporting the ballot papers because these are the very sensitive material that needs to be safeguarded because of the electoral integrity. But it has happened that the commission had a hidden agenda to deal with us in relations with the supplying company to the extent that the supplying company, which was printing our ballot papers, was undermining the delegations that were actually sent and coming up with their terms where we were not allowed to participate in all processes that we were supposed to."

Salomo Haufiku, a representative from AR, said, "We were not given that chance. We were given 30 minutes, 15 minutes, one day to enter the printing press. There was no physical contact with what was happening. There was nothing; we were not engaged when it comes to the whole process. We raised our concern about how things were happening, but we were totally, totally sold, I can say, because we don't know what happened. Imagine the printing shop; the printing is happening the whole day. You are given 15 minutes to enter and get out, and that's it for a day."

A representative of the Body of Christ, Festus Thomas, said, "This is the body of Christ, the president of the body of Christ. From here, we have a mission to South Africa with four objectives. As observers, we went to observe the design, the printing, and also the packaging. But when it comes to the printing, we can say it by this time around; just to cut the story short, there was no observing. Because we were not even allowed time to observe."

"Because we were not appointed, we have the right to see and to follow up on the whole process. I think the process must begin at the end of the ransom company. The Ren-Form company will have to take the whole process. Even looking at us, we were just informers. Of course, we will just follow up. Of course, we should act like we have to follow every step of the process. At the end of the day, we were just. When we come here, in just 15 minutes, we are done with the process," said Simeon Papama, National Patriotic Front representative.