EDITORIAL
A myriad of school-boy errors led to last Friday’s election re-runs in the Hardap and //Karas regions and the taxpayer will cough up heavily for this.
One of the glaring, if unprofessional, transgressions that led to the re-run was about a polling station being closed before authorised time.
This criminal conduct and a pile of other irregular activities led not only to new routine electoral expenditures, but also had the Electoral Commission of Namibia ordered by a court to pay N$50 000 to each political party and independent candidate affected by the re-run.
We do not know what action, if any, had been taken against the officials responsible for these costly mistakes.
If history has taught us anything about this country, it’s that people are hardly held accountable for their actions. Impunity has become our national sport.
It is due to this exact attitude that even government ministries had their power cut off last week because we have adopted a very problematic attitude of simply not taking responsibility for our actions. And then, when punitive measures are taken, we start pointing fingers at everyone but ourselves.
Agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein yesterday questioned the supposed double standards of the City of Windhoek’s decision to cut services to ministries like his, while the City itself owes NamWater and NamPower millions of dollars. This level of whataboutism is exactly what is holding our country back.
One of the glaring, if unprofessional, transgressions that led to the re-run was about a polling station being closed before authorised time.
This criminal conduct and a pile of other irregular activities led not only to new routine electoral expenditures, but also had the Electoral Commission of Namibia ordered by a court to pay N$50 000 to each political party and independent candidate affected by the re-run.
We do not know what action, if any, had been taken against the officials responsible for these costly mistakes.
If history has taught us anything about this country, it’s that people are hardly held accountable for their actions. Impunity has become our national sport.
It is due to this exact attitude that even government ministries had their power cut off last week because we have adopted a very problematic attitude of simply not taking responsibility for our actions. And then, when punitive measures are taken, we start pointing fingers at everyone but ourselves.
Agriculture minister Calle Schlettwein yesterday questioned the supposed double standards of the City of Windhoek’s decision to cut services to ministries like his, while the City itself owes NamWater and NamPower millions of dollars. This level of whataboutism is exactly what is holding our country back.
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