EDITORIAL: Gender of president irrelevant
Former prime minister Nahas Angula, speaking on The Evening Review last night, pressed alarm bells against profiling potential presidential candidates based on matters that have no influence on the content of their character.
This was in response to a question about increasing calls for a female president. Content of character, the most important consideration in one becoming a president, is nowhere in this discourse. And this is what Angula is opposed to.
To simply say a woman, man or a person from this tribe or region must take over the highest office in the land is both foolish and negligent.
In America, they have had 46 presidents – all of them men. Women have contested for the Oval Office and none of them used the ‘female’ ticket in their campaigns. In bloodied battles with men, they presented their ideas of how to make America better and the masses made their choices at the ballot.
In Namibia, everything we do is cosmetic window dressing. State House is too big an office to be occupied through sentimentalism on genitalia and pity narratives. We don’t need anyone ripping off their pants to show us why they deserve our vote for the highest office.
The tribal profiling that characterised the Swapo 2012 congress has taught us there are more cardinal considerations that should supersede our personal, biological and cultural identities.
This was in response to a question about increasing calls for a female president. Content of character, the most important consideration in one becoming a president, is nowhere in this discourse. And this is what Angula is opposed to.
To simply say a woman, man or a person from this tribe or region must take over the highest office in the land is both foolish and negligent.
In America, they have had 46 presidents – all of them men. Women have contested for the Oval Office and none of them used the ‘female’ ticket in their campaigns. In bloodied battles with men, they presented their ideas of how to make America better and the masses made their choices at the ballot.
In Namibia, everything we do is cosmetic window dressing. State House is too big an office to be occupied through sentimentalism on genitalia and pity narratives. We don’t need anyone ripping off their pants to show us why they deserve our vote for the highest office.
The tribal profiling that characterised the Swapo 2012 congress has taught us there are more cardinal considerations that should supersede our personal, biological and cultural identities.
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