PM’s official events in campaign regions irk opponents

Swapo vice-presidential candidate Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has been criticised for organising official events in regions where congress candidates are set to engage delegates.

Her competitors in the watershed race have enumerated coordinated events organised in the regions where campaigns are headed, saying this gave her an unfair advantage.

“In Omaheke, she had a drought relief event and in Erongo she met with the Erongo regional leadership and had a mass housing event.

"In Zambezi, she assessed the border situation and something related to service delivery,” a supporter of Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, one of the prime minister’s rivals in the race for vice-president, said.

Nandi-Ndaitwah’s own belated Heroes Day commemorative event in Ohangwena recently, where she was the headline speaker, was similarly viewed as a campaign tactic. Many of her supporters in the Swapo race, including some candidates on her slate, were in attendance.

The other rival in the vice-president race, Pohamba Shifeta, officiated a climate change event last Friday at Sikanjabuka in Zambezi before candidates engaged the region’s congress delegates the next day.

A source from Kuugongelwa-Amadhila’s campaign team insisted that all candidates have side events and it should thus not be pinned on the prime minister alone.

Track record

Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has downplayed the influence of her sideline activities ahead of meeting regional delegates, saying they are not what delegates at the Swapo Party congress will use to vote for her, but her track record in public office instead.

Yesterday, ahead of candidates addressing congress delegates in Kavango East today, she presided over a handover ceremony in Rundu where her office donated furniture to two struggling schools.

Namibian Sun spoke to her on the sidelines of the ceremony, and alerted her to the discontent of her rivals.

Pouring cold water on allegations that such activities are aimed at scoring political points ahead of engaging delegates as per the new campaign rules, she said congress delegates will look at who has over the years demonstrated that they are capable of leading the party or government.

“I don’t think I necessarily have an advantage over my competitors just because of the activities that I just carried out,” she said.

Yardstick

“At the end of the day, all of us have been serving Namibians in various capacities and I don’t support the idea that the Swapo electorate will assess us for our suitability to be elected on the basis of what we did on the day we visit them in their regions,” the former finance minister said.

“If there is support for me, it’s definitely not there because I am here today. It is because people have observed me since the time I joined Swapo as a young person, the energy and commitment and the various positions I served in and what I have been able to deliver,” she said.

“That is what they are going to use as a yardstick to determine whether I am fit to be deployed into the position of vice-president, and I am inspired and grateful for the positive feedback I am receiving from Namibians across the landscape and Swapo members.”

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