THE president of United Democratic Front (UDF) Apius !Auxab believes corruption can bring the downfall of the government.
“We don’t support systemic corruption. UDF’s dream is for a corruption-free Namibia. Corruption can be the downfall of a government,” he said.
Asked his opinion on the Fishrot corruption scandal, !Auxab said he could not comment on it as it was sub-judice.
“Its like an egg that’s not open. UDF will not comment,”!Auxab said.
The UDF leader said his party dreams of a corruption-free country and that corruption is like a cancer. “It’s a cancer for development. Its a cancer for leadership, we should treat the cancer, “ !Auxab said.
He added that corruption should be uprooted. “We should monitor it and uproot it.”
!Auxab’s comments come after president Hage Geingob told the first Cabinet meeting of the year that growing public perceptions of Namibia being a corrupt country should not be used to measure the country’s corruption level, as it is based on people’s opinions. He also highlighted a new Afrobarometer report which paints Namibia in a good light.
The report ranked Namibia and Cape Verde as the top two African countries where citizens rarely pay bribes to access public services. The president used the new rating to back his claim that there was no systemic corruption in the country.
“Systemic corruption is when you have to pay to get services. Not … what you think is corruption. Systemic is when the system only works when money is paid for services. Here they are saying Namibia and Cape Verde are the two countries in which you don’t have to pay for services,” Geingob said.
The report, however, states that corruption perceptions in Namibia had increased to 74% in the last 12 months.
It states that Namibians held this perception “even though the survey field work was done before the Fishrot corruption scandal was exposed in November 2019”.
It also states that Namibia dropped 26 points in terms of positive assessments of the government’s handling of corruption.
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