Results
SWAPO won the elections with 57% of the votes, short of the two-thirds majority needed to control the constitutional process entirely. A Constituent Assembly based on the results of the election met to consider a draft Constitution, which was adopted on 9 February 1990. The Assembly determined that 21 March 1990 would be Namibia's independence day.
After the elections, AG Pienaar continued his role alongside UN Special Representative Ahtisaari and UNTAG. One of Pienaar's final acts was to amend the amnesty against future prosecution granted to Namibian exiles in June 1989 to cover anyone, including South African officials, militia, and the SADF for crimes committed in during the war.
In the months after the election, UNTAG forces were slowly drawn down and the final SADF forces were withdrawn. By the independence day, all UNTAG forces had been left with the exception of some Kenyan troops who remained to train the new Namibian Army under an independent agreement. Several UN diplomatic personnel also stayed to assist the newly independent state.
UNTAG was considered very successful by the UN and its member states. Namibia became a democracy, without the racial segregation seen under the apartheid system. The security problems had decreased during the UNTAG deployment and the elections had gone off better than expected. Despite tensions, after the elections, the Namibian and South African governments had established formal diplomatic relations. Furthermore, worries about costs were proven unfounded as UNTAG was well under the original budget of US$700 million, and even well under the reduced budget passed by the Security Council of US$416 million, costing less than US$368.6 million. There were 19 fatalities to UN personnel in just over a year.
Read more about this topic: United Nations Transition Assistance Group
Famous quotes containing the word results:
“It amazes me when I hear any person prefer blindness to deafness. Such a person must have a terrible dread of being alone. Blindness makes one totally dependent on others, and deprives us of every satisfaction that results from light.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)
“It would be easy ... to regard the whole of world 3 as timeless, as Plato suggested of his world of Forms or Ideas.... I propose a different view—one which, I have found, is surprisingly fruitful. I regard world 3 as being essentially the product of the human mind.... More precisely, I regard the world 3 of problems, theories, and critical arguments as one of the results of the evolution of human language, and as acting back on this evolution.”
—Karl Popper (1902–1994)