Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila says her 12-year reign as the country’s finance minister is impeccable and those accusing her of maleficence have no evidence to back up such claims.
Hitting back to scathing comments by Landless People’s Movement leader Bernadus Swartbooi, she said there is sufficient data that vindicates her of the purported poor performance. “The allegations of a poor performance record for the Prime Minister are contradicted by official data which shows a strong balance sheet at the time, with three successive surplus years, the highest economic growth rates,” the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) said in a statement yesterday.
The OPM’s fervent position is that Kuugongelwa-Amadhila left “robust financial institutions and systems, an investment grade credit rating for the government, strong investments in social development, including social safety nets and an expanded network of infrastructure that provide a solid basis for future growth [in place]”.
Earlier this week, the LPM firebrand said Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s meteoric political rise was built on successive failures and that she was handed everything on a silver platter.
“This life of extraordinary privilege and her dramatic rise from rags to riches, made her cold, robotic, unable to politically appreciate the dynamics of leadership and social relations,” Swartbooi said.
In Swartbooi’s eyes, the prime minister is just an “incompetent exaggerated project”.
“Allegations of unethical conduct are devoid of any truth and have not been substantiated with evidence,” the office said.
The south
While in the southern part of the country recently, Kuugongelwa-Amadhila made remarks that detonated LPM’s wrath.
She said service delivery was decaying in regions led by LPM. LPM governs the two southern [Hardap and //Kharas] regional councils and most local authorities in those regions. “//Kharas is the only region which has not hosted a state of the region address for the past two years and the governor has to create a different platform outside of the regional council to provide feedback to the nation… We cannot progress. Development dies, and that is exactly what is happening in these three regions [//Kharas, Hardap and Erongo], even though Erongo is improving now. These are the worst regions,” she said during the visit. Yesterday, she stuck to her guns, maintaining that political interference in the south was indeed hampering service delivery.
“This concern is genuine, as the said address is a mandatory requirement of the law, and it is a form of accountability of the government to the public.
“It is unfortunate that the issue has been misrepresented. This detracts attention from efforts to address the problem. It is important that public officials put their political differences aside and focus on serving the public,” the OPM said.
During these visits, which coincided with the ruling Swapo party’s internal campaign, the PM held “fruitful discussions with government regional leadership and other key stakeholders”.
Politicking
Last week, former //Kharas governor Lucia Basson criticised Kuugongelwa-Amadhila for shifting blame to LPM for poor service delivery in the region.
According to Basson, her plea to the prime minister to visit the region to address incomplete projects during her 10-year reign as governor fell on deaf ears.
“Therefore, I am surprised that the prime minister is campaigning in the //Kharas region under falsehoods. I would have just embarrassed her if I was there. Because even the promises she is making, she will never fulfil,” the former governor said, seemingly suggesting the prime minister was simply collecting political points.
To Basson, the OPM had this to say: “The prime minister has never refused invitations to discuss the status of capital projects and the employment of children of the liberation struggle as indicated in these assertions. She has always availed herself to be engaged on matters affecting communities throughout the country and will continue doing so.”
Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, alongside incumbent Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah and environment minister Pohamba Shifeta are all gunning for the Swapo vice presidency.
They were all in the south last week, holding official government functions, on the sidelines of their campaigns.
Not true
The OPM also rebuffed the assertion by LPM that the country’s longest serving finance minister (12 years) led a retrogressive and elitist crusade of unfair distribution of public resources based on each region’s population.
This, they said, saw more of the country’s resources given to the northern regions, at the expense of the southern ones.
“The prime minister has consistently
supported community development initiatives around the country and has mobilised private sector support to many such initiatives over the years,” the office dismissed.
Pension funds
This week, the Popular Democratic
Movement (PDM) criticised government’s plans to use private sector savings from
local banks, investment and insurance companies to finance its developmental ambitions. The PDM equated the move to daylight robbery.
“But this government has already mismanaged this economy and the finances of this country generated through taxes. They must just inform us if the country is bankrupt, so we go back to the drawing board,” PDM’s secretary general Manuel Ngaringombe was quoted as saying.
Again, the OPM noted that PDM’s concerns are misplaced, as there exist laws and regulations that oblige financial institutions to invest locally.