Popular Democratic Movement (PDM) lawmaker Charmaine Tjirare last week demanded the backpay of party members who joined the House two years later while their seats were occupied by fellow party members. 

In 2022, the Supreme Court ruled that six PDM members – Esmeralda Esme !Aebes, Johannes Martin, Kazeongere Tjeundo, Godfrey Kupuzo Mwilima, Timotheus Sydney Shihumbu and Pieter Mostert – were unlawfully added to the National Assembly list. 

Thereafter, they were replaced by Hidipo Hamata, Yvette Araes, Maximalliant Katjimune, Reggie Diergaardt, Charmaine Tjirare and Mike Venaani, PDMs leader McHenry Venaani’s father.

Tjirare said the Members of Parliament who were duly elected have not been compensated for prior losses, current losses and future losses. 

She said the National Assembly was fully aware from the onset that the swearing-in of the ‘PDM 6’ was illegal. 

“We specifically alerted the Speaker of the National Assembly as well as the Secretary of our quest to seek judicial advice on the way forward. Two years and a half later, the judgement came through,” said Tjirare in Parliament.

She adamantly said she went to court for two and a half years to get what was rightfully hers. 

“Paragraphs 41 and 42 of the Supreme Court judgement, respectively, state that they want to respect the separation of powers and will not impose on the National Assembly as to how to rectify the situation,” she said.

Tjirare added that remedies must be implemented by the Supreme Court for the National Assembly to act accordingly towards the Members of Parliament who were “rightfully and duly-elected”.

The lawmaker described the matter as an unfathomable and mind-boggling injustice,“…especially seeing that it was being committed by lawmakers and their administrators to fellow lawmakers with the audience of other lawmakers”.

Tjirare and five others have since their swearing-in been demanding backpay from the National Assembly, as they allegedly became duly-elected Members of Parliament in 2019.

Their perks should be backdated to 20 March 2020. 

The group of six, through their lawyer Norman Tjombe, have been insisting that “the actions of the Electoral Commission of Namibia (ECN) were no doubt unlawful as confirmed by a full bench of the Electoral Court of Namibia and the Supreme Court of Namibia. It was unlawful for the secretary of the National Assembly to have accepted the list of persons to be sworn in, which list excluded our clients”.

Tjirare said the ECN, PDM and National Assembly are not being accountable for what transpired, threatening further litigation to get the matter resolved.

“I should go to court to once again highlight the very lawlessness that was in your faces in 2020, and wait for another two and a half years for you to be told the exact same thing that I said in 2020 once again? I do not have the time, courtesy nor the patience to wait for two and a half years for what is rightfully mine,” she maintained.

Last year, National Assembly Secretary Lydia Kandetu said Parliament is not liable to backpay members who joined the House two years later while their seats were occupied by fellow party members. “We are only liable for paying a member of the National Assembly. When the first group was gazetted by the ECN, those names were forwarded to us. We started paying them. 

When they were removed following the court ruling, we stopped paying them, as they ceased to be members [of the National Assembly]. Following another ECN gazette of new names, we started paying the new MPs,” she said at the time.

Kandetu had said the National Assembly does not decide who gets paid. “We don’t remove or bring people to Parliament,” she said.

-ashikololo@nepc.com.na