RDP chooses its candidates

THE Rally for Democracy and Progress’s electoral college this weekend ended with a strong message of diversity.

The party’s final list shows diversity as it is represented by a mixture of new faces and seasoned politicians. ‘We seek to shame those who have to tried to characterise the RDP as a Kwanyama party,’ said RDP President Hidipo Hamutenya when he presented the final party list to the media.The top 16 has eight political novices – even the party Vice President, Steve Bezuidenhout, was not known as a politician until two years ago when he helped form the RDP. The other political novices are: Vice Secretary General Agnes Limbo, Heiko Lukas, Lauraine Weyers and Ndapewa Nghipandulwa. Former National Housing Enterprise (NHE) CEO Mike Kavekotora is at number 16.He was also there as a presidential candidate and was not elected.The party’s youth wing managed to get its Secretary Nicanor Ndjoze and deputy secretary Sam Hamunyela in the top 16.The party seems to have pushed the diversity card so hard that the top of the list also shows that it has eight non-Owambos. Also among the elected candidates is former MP Anton von Wietersheim with 215 votes, followed by former National Council Chairman Kandy Nehova, with 198 votes. It is a list of mixed group leaders. Only seven of the top 16 served in top Swapo positions, while seven have served in Parliament before. Rudolph Kamburona is the only one in the top 16 to have served in Parliament for a political party other than Swapo. The request of RDP President Hamutenya at the short opening ceremony of the Electoral College on Saturday for the 312 delegates to consider ethnic diversity, gender balance, the disabled and the youth bore fruit. ‘We must think of gender balance, the young generation, our diverse cultures and languages as well as the thirteen regions where we all hail from. All these factors should be reflected on the list of our team we want to send to Parliament after the November elections,’ Hamutenya said. ‘This we have achieved,’ the RDP president said on Sunday morning.About a third of the 72 candidates elected – 23 – are women. This is more than the list of the ruling Swapo Party, where only about a dozen women managed to make it to the list.Among the RDP women is also a representative of the marginalised San community, Francis Basson.Apart from RDP Deputy Secretary General Agnes Limbo, who is the only woman among the top four leaders, Lorraine Weyers and former Swapo MP Michaela Hübschle, who resigned from that party two years ago, are the highest ranked women on the list, at No 10 and 11. They scored 173 and 172 votes respectively. Dr Beatrice Sande-lowsky, who ran the Tucsin College for many years, is ranked 19th with 141 votes and former Nantu secretary General Mirjam Hamutenya is the next woman candidate as Number 26 on the list. She scored 130 votes.Other surprises are Windhoek businessman Nic Kruger, who was involved in the printing business for many years and who is involved in the monthly publication Agriforum, and Heiko Lucks, also from Windhoek and involved in the business sector.A young entrepreneur from southern Namibia, Desmond Andreas, who is in his late twenties, was voted in at Number 48.On Saturday, Hamutenya had urged delegates to consider the diverse ethnic groups in Namibia and also the physically disabled community to make the list of 72 candidates as inclusive as possible. Counting of the ballots started around 20h00 on Saturday at the Gemeindezentrum (GZ) of the German Lutheran Church in Bismarck Street, where the delegates gathered for the day.’We counted right through the night until six this morning (Sunday morning),’ Michaela Hübschle told The Namibian yesterday. Hübschle was among several of small teams who processed the counting. ‘We had a lawyer as legal advisor with us all along to ensure transparency and we re-checked and verified the counting process,’ she added.