Riruako attacks corruption, promises better under Nudo

CORRUPTION has become endemic in Namibia under the Swapo government, Nudo President Kuaima Riruako charged at his party’s last big election campaign meeting in Windhoek on Sunday.

Addressing an enthusiastic crowd of hundreds of Nudo supporters – many of them decked out in party colours, and with many of the women in colourful traditional Herero dresses – Riruako promised that a Nudo government would ensure that resources and opportunities in Namibia are distributed fairly and equitably to all the citizens of the country.This has not been happening under the Swapo Party government, Riruako charged.Claiming that a recent United Nations Human Development Report has indicated that more than 400 000 Namibians are living in dire poverty and are virtually facing starvation, Riruako said: ‘It all points to one hard and cruel truth: that the rulers of the day, the Swapo government, is not having its priorities right.’Riruako said: ‘We are allowing wastage of national resources and not spending money where it is needed badly. We choose to spend money in sustaining failed regimes like the Mugabe of Zimbabwe instead of investing in productive capacity of our country so as to be able to feed ourselves. Resources are there but they are not properly used, neither are they equitably distributed among the citizens of this country.’The bulk of Namibia’s wealth is still disproportionately owned by the descendants of the colonial masters of the past, Riruako said.He went on to charge that resources available to the State are being distributed ‘in a highly skewed manner feeding the notion of a ‘super-ethnic group’ being deliberately engineered’.He said: ‘Millionaires and those with unhindered access to business and educational opportunities are only to be found in one ethnic group. Is that an accident?’Riruako claimed this is ‘an indication of the degree to which corruption has become endemic in the governance of Namibia under (the) Swapo government’. ‘Corruption manifests itself in the manner in which public resources are expended,’ he said. ‘Corruption and day time thievery of public resources and funds are the order of the day in Namibia under Swapo. Hundred million at the ODC, 30 million at Social Security Commission, 3 million at the Ministry of Defence, 100 million to Nuctech, 25 million ostensibly borrowed by the DRC government. This hyper thievery, it is criminal!’He claimed that tribalism is also manifested in the way people are appointed to senior public offices, with the vast majority of Namibia’s ambassadors abroad, Permanent Secretaries and heads of parastatals exclusively from one ethnic group.’Nudo in government would ensure that resources and opportunities are distributed fairly and equitably to all the citizens of the Republic of Namibia,’ Riruako said.The party would also make the provision of affordable health care a priority, he promised.He said: ‘Nudo in government will as a matter of fact go a long way to institute a government that is inclusive of all our people with their diverse interests and multiple identities and personalities.’First-time voters this year should use their first chance to vote to make sure that there is a change of guard at State House, Riruako said. His party is ‘the only one that can guarantee a government that cares about the youth today, tomorrow and the day thereafter,’ he said.Nudo, he said, ‘is futuristic in outlook unlike those stuck in trumpeting the armed struggle and the whimsical victories of yesteryears’ wars’. The 2009 elections are the second national elections that Nudo will be taking part in. After breaking away from the DTA in late 2003, Nudo won 34 814 votes – 4,15 per cent of the total cast – in the 2004 National Assembly election, securing three seats in the National Assembly for the party.