2017-10-13Staff Report 2 Staff Reporter Windhoek-The Swapo Party Elders’ Council (SPEC) says the top four senior positions in the ruling party’s congress next month should be occupied by “tested and tried cadres, who, in addition to unquestionable loyalty, have the political maturity, intellectual insight and love for the Namibian people at heart”. President Hage Geingob last Friday during the politburo meeting in Windhoek, announced his top four slates, which include himself for presidency, International Relations and Cooperation Minister Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah for vice-president, Urban and Rural Development Minister Sophia Shaningwa for the secretary-general position while Swapo School acting rector Marco Hausiku is Geingob’s preferred candidate for deputy secretary-general. In a statement issued yesterday, SPEC secretary, Mukwaita Shanyengana, appealed that the top four leaders be elected on merit because they have served and worked meritoriously in the party structures starting from the lowest entry levels, and can add value to the party’s programmes. “Not because they are empty yet excellent barking dogs without the bite, posturing as populist radical armchair revolutionaries, or very good sloganeers at the party fundraising braais or rallies,” he remarked. Shanyengana said this is the time for the political bureau, central committee congress and individual Swapo Party members to reject egoistical individualism, regionalism, tribalism and greedy power hungriness, and put the survival and future of the parry and the national interest of Namibia at the centre. He charged some people could easily be influenced by the politics of the belly, ethnicity, tribe and region, saying “that is not the Swapo of One Namibia, One National and One Leader”. “We must learn from the experiences still fresh in our memories, or the divisive now moribund factions of the Shipangas, Muyongos, CoD and RDP projects, which have now been buried in the historical dustbin of nothingness. These were all divisive ethnic projects, which we should avoid as we go to elect our top four leaders, and those of the political bureau and the central committee,” he maintained. 2017-10-13Staff Report 2
