Namibia votes and could have its first female leader. But election upsets have shaken the region

WINDHOEK, Namibia (AP) — A 72-year-old woman who joined Namibia's independence movement in the 1970s is a strong contender to become its first female leader as the country votes Wednesday in a presidential election.

Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah is the current vice president and the ruling SWAPO party's candidate for president. She's already in the lead after the results of special early voting among citizens overseas and the armed forces were announced earlier this month.

But SWAPO, which has governed the southern African country and held the presidency for 34 years since independence from apartheid South Africa in 1990, faces growing frustration caused by high unemployment and economic hardship, especially among young people.

That is a common theme that has led to momentous election upsets in other countries in the region this year. Voters elsewhere in southern Africa have rejected parties that liberated their nations from colonial or white minority rule in favor of era-ending change to address new problems.

In neighboring South Africa, the African National Congress that ruled for three decades since the end of the racist system of apartheid lost its majority in a landmark election result in June. Botswana's ruling party lost in a landslide last month after 58 years in power since independence from Britain, and Mauritius delivered a surprising heavy defeat for its incumbent party this month.

Mozambique's long-ruling Frelimo party was declared the winner of an election in October, prompting claims of vote rigging and sparking ongoing violent protests against the party.

About 1.4 million people — approximately half the Namibian population — are registered to vote to decide the president and the makeup of Parliament for a five-year term. The country on the southwestern coast of Africa is a former German colony that came under South African control after World War I and its Black majority was later subjected to some of South Africa's apartheid policies. SWAPO was at the forefront of the battle for independence.

Nandi-Ndaitwah voted at an elementary school in the capital, Windhoek. She told reporters that one of her party’s key focuses to fight poverty was attracting more foreign investment to a country with diamond and uranium resources, and untapped oil and gas off its coast that is being explored by international energy companies.

“There should be a balance to make sure that the Namibian people, who are the owners of these resources, benefit from them,” she said.

Fourteen other candidates are also running for president, including Panduleni Itula, a former dentist who was SWAPO’s closest challenger four years ago when he ran as an independent. He is representing the Independent Patriots for Change party this year. A runoff will be held if a candidate doesn’t win more than 50% of the votes, which has never happened before in Namibia.

Polls close at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT) and results are expected by the weekend.

President Hage Geingob died in office in February and Geingob's vice president, Nangolo Mbumba, became head of state.

While Nandi-Ndaitwah represents the rare chance for a female leader in Africa, SWAPO's popularity has slipped and it won the presidency with its lowest share of the vote ever in the last national election in 2019.

Nandi-Ndaitwah, who received part of her education in the then-Soviet Union while in exile during the fight for independence, has promised to create more jobs and tackle the 20% unemployment rate for young people and graduates. She has pledged to spend approximately 85 billion Namibian dollars ($4.7 billion) over the next five years to create more than 500,000 jobs, a goal that her critics call unrealistic.

Issues affecting women, including reproductive rights, equal pay and health care, are also likely to rank high for voters in a country that has the Kalahari Desert running through its center and the Namib Desert along its coast and has one of the sparsest populations in the world. Just over 3 million people live in Namibia, which is more than twice the size of Germany.

Those deserts make it one of the driest countries in southern Africa that's vulnerable to climate shocks, like an El Nino-induced drought that parched the region this year. As a result, Namibian authorities announced they would kill hundreds of wild animals to provide food for hungry people.

AP Africa news: https://apnews.com/hub/africa

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

A woman sits as Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in presidential elections in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians inside a polling station votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibia's vice president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, centre, of the ruling South West Africa People's Organization, (SWAPO) attends an election rally in Windhoek, Namibia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024 ahead of elections Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Esther Mbathera)

Elections poster of poles in Windhoek, Namibia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024 ahead of elections Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Esther Mbathera)

Namibia's vice president Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, center, of the ruling South West Africa People's Organization, (SWAPO) attends an election rally in Windhoek, Namibia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024, ahead of elections Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Esther Mbathera)

Members of the ruling South West Africa People's Organization, (SWAPO) attends an election rally in Windhoek, Namibia, Sunday, Nov. 24, 2024 ahead of elections Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Esther Mbathera)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

Namibians queue to cast their votes in a presidential election in Windhoek, Namibia Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Dirk Heinrich)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine police officials on Wednesday filed criminal complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte and her security staff for allegedly assaulting authorities and disobeying orders in a recent altercation in Congress.

The criminal complaints filed by the Quezon City police were separate from any legal action that may arise after she publicly threatened to have President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., his wife and the speaker of the House of Representatives assassinated if she were killed herself in an unspecified plot. She has not provided details of that plot.

A presidential adviser, Larry Gadon, separately filed a Supreme Court petition on Wednesday to disbar the vice president as a lawyer, citing her assassination threats, which he said were “illegal, immoral and condemnable.”

The Marcos administration’s legal offensive against Duterte, her father and their allies is a critical juncture in a conflict that has seethed over the last two years between the two most powerful families in the Philippines.

The Department of Justice said it is also looking into potentially seditious remarks by Marcos’s predecessor and the vice president’s father, Rodrigo Duterte, who said in a news conference that the civilian government would only listen if the military voices concerns about corruption and irregularities under the Marcos administration.

"There is a fractured governance. … It is only the military who can correct it,” the former president said Monday night. He said he was not urging the military to rise up against Marcos but only reaffirming the real situation in the Philippines.

Still, justice officials said an investigation into the former president's remarks will proceed.

The criminal complaints for assaulting, disobeying and grave coercion against police authorities were filed against the vice president and her security staff and other aides before state prosecutors, a police statement said. Such crimes are punishable by a jail term and a fine.

The complaints were set off by a chaotic squabble over the weekend in the House of Representatives, where the vice president’s chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, has been temporarily detained. Lopez has been accused by legislators of obstructing and not cooperating with a congressional inquiry into alleged misuse of confidential and intelligence funds by the offices of the vice president and the education secretary, which Sara Duterte held.

At one point, authorities were ordered to transfer Lopez to a women’s prison outside Congress, causing her to become agitated. The vice president and her staff intervened to oppose the order and Lopez was eventually moved to a government hospital, where she remains confined.

“The rule of law is fundamental to our democratic system. No one, regardless of their position, should be above accountability,” national police chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil said of the criminal complaints against the vice president and her aides. The national police “remain committed to ensuring the proper execution of lawful orders and protecting public order,” he said.

"Resistance and disobedience to a person in authority not only violates the law but also undermines public trust,” Marbil said.

In a separate case, authorities delivered a subpoena to the vice president's office Tuesday, inviting her to answer investigators’ questions about the threats she made over the weekend. Duterte said she was not making a direct threat but was expressing concerns for her own safety.

Marcos said in a televised public address that the vice president’s threats against him, his wife Liza Marcos and House Speaker Martin Romualdez were a criminal plot and vowed to fight them and uphold the rule of law.

Marcos ran with Sara Duterte as his vice-presidential running mate in 2022 elections and both won landslide victories on a campaign call for national unity. In the Philippines, the president and vice president are elected separately, and that has resulted in rival politicians assuming the top political posts in a country with deep political and social divisions.

The two leaders and their camps have since fallen out over key differences, including in their approaches to China’s aggressive territorial claims i n the disputed South China Sea and views on ex-President Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown, which left thousands of mostly poor suspect dead.

Sara Duterte resigned from the Marcos Cabinet in June as education secretary and head of an anti-insurgency body and became one of the most vocal critics of the president, his wife and Romualdez, the president’s cousin who heads a congress that’s dominated by their allies.

Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte gestures as she attends a hearing at the House of Representative in Quezon City, Philippines on Monday Nov. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

FILE - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. listens during the 12th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) -U.S. Summit in Vientiane, Laos, Oct. 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File)

FILE - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., center right, and Vice President Sara Duterte, daughter of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, raise hands during the inauguration ceremony at National Museum on Thursday, June 30, 2022 in Manila, Philippines. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

This combination photo shows Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, left, in Quezon City, Philippines, Nov. 13, 2024, and Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in Vientiane, Laos, Oct. 9, 2024. (AP Photo)