IPC’s Itula says no to authoritarians

Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) president Panduleni Itula has vowed to challenge authoritarianism in the country.

Following the tabling of recent bills seeking to give the president and Cabinet more control of state resources, including oil and gas and state-owned enterprises, Itula argues these are authoritarian systems.

He was speaking at a meeting of the IPC’s national executive committee in Windhoek on Saturday.

Itula said the appointment of the IPC’s shadow ministers matching the president’s Cabinet ministers was done in preparation for what is unfolding now.

“We can see the weakness in an authoritarian leader. A leader who is unable to analyse situations but seeks to use a stick by legislating unlawfully and even going over to break the principles of rule of law and proclaiming through a proclamation that everybody that wants to go on holiday across to the legislators will have to ask permission from her,” Itula argued.

He said the IPC will fight it because others, including those affected, are silent.

He said the IPC will challenge this so that Namibia does not end up in an authoritarian system where the Constitution, which many have sacrificed for, is disregarded.

He said that as a system, the IPC will honour it, and that means they have to stand up as leaders to protect the Constitution.

The notion of entitlement to govern the country must collapse, he said.

Itula urged party members to empower themselves to be able to understand and explain to the masses what is at stake.

“We can see across the fence that, like Alexander, the great army, it is collapsing. All empires in history have come to an end. And Alexander, the great one, once said that I am not fearful of an army of lions led by a sheep but only by an army of sheep led by a lion. That is the IPC they need to be afraid of,” Itula said.

He said the meeting is a culmination of what is called the presidential strategic consultative meeting which he started last year, seeking knowledge from various party members and examining what the party went through in the past two years.

He called on members to prepare themselves to fight even harder as the tides of an authoritarian regime looms.

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