The Constitutional Blunder
THE essay of Fluksman Samuehl (‘Will A New Building Improve Debates?’) in The Namibian, 7 September 2012 was important. It was even highly important because the writer touched on the question of the ‘autonomy’ of the Namibian parliament. I would like to be more specific.
Many of us say that our Constitution lacks the power to protect parliament’s independence and we can do nothing about it. If so, this impotence is possibly the only really blunder in our Constitution. However, it proved to be a most crucial blunder. Crucial because it excludes the people from decision making! If the people are excluded, what type of democracy do we then have? A democracy without the people ruling is a contradiction in terms, it would be absurd to speak of a democracy!
Our Constitution – as well constructed as it otherwise is – was obviously unable to guarantee the autonomy of parliament. Or was this an intentional omission by the Constituent Assembly?
What we have instead is a mere paper-democracy. We do not have a real democracy. The citizenry of this country does not rule Namibia. A party autocracy rules Namibia. We have to explain it again, this became possible because Cabinet was able to take over parliament and reduce it to insignificance, to being an institution controlled and dominated by Cabinet.
The number of cabinet members in parliament is greater than the number of non-cabinet members and all the efforts of concerned people to explain to the electorate the dangers of this fact has fallen on deaf ears. The citizens of Namibia closed their ears because they have again learned to fear their own government. However, it should be the other way around in a true democracy! Fear reduces any political activity to toadyism, to adulation.
This attitude, if not corrected, will eventually destroy Namibia!
Peter
By E-mail